DTH Operator's in South Asia

For most of you who know and for those who do not know there are three operating DTH Operators in this region as of today.

1) Dish TV India
2) CBNSat Sri Lanka
3) DD Direct India

Dish TV which started a few years before CBNSat is the first DTH operator in this region and now at present provide well over 100 channels including Movie on Demand Services, Gaming, DVR's and a host of other facilities. This DTH Service is a Pay TV service and also provides channels not available on regular Cable TV.

CBNSat which started last year has under 45 Channels as of now. There is no clear indication about the services that they will provide us with since their Electronic Programme Guide is not also not in operation and they still have a lot of work to do with their service which is happening at a very slow pace since the competition that they face in Sri Lanka is not as compared to the operators from India since there is stiff competition there from regular Cable TV Operators. In Sri Lanka regular Cable TV is also just getting off the ground. This is a Pay TV operation.

DD Direct which is operated by Doordharshan India is a DTH provider who provide a Free-To-Air Service. This means you pay only for the equipment and no charge is levied monthly for viewing the channels. This also means that you do not get the Pay TV Channels on this platform and therefore can view only the free to air channels on offer. This FTA DTH Service provides approximately 30 channels now but from May it will provide more than 50 channels.

In addition to the above Tata and Star TV have already set themselves up for a launch of their own DTH Service supposedly named Space TV or T-Sky. This DTH Service will be launched in another few months for Indian viewers.

Also another one operated by the Sun TV network too may be launched as they are also looking for the prospects of entering the DTH frontier.

It looks like the DTH frontier is hotting up in this region as more companies jump on the platform. As long as the viewer gets a quality service the services will continue to improve.