| A year ago, the ARPU for the cable operators ranged between Rs 150 and Rs 200. This has now come down to between Rs 130 and Rs 160, say cable industry sources. |
| The declining ARPU will have an adverse impact on the entire value chain, from cable operators to the Multi System Operators (MSOs) and from MSOs to the broadcasters, experts say. |
| The reason for the decline is the conversion of consumers from cable service to DTH services due to better viewing experience coupled with regulatory issues like the conditional access system (CAS) affecting 800,000 homes in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. |
| The two private DTH companies, Tata Sky and Dish TV, are adding over 7,000 consumers to their kitty every day. Even though it's still a small number, but the direct-to-home companies comand over six per cent (about 4 million DTH susbcribers) of the total of 70 million cable homes. |
| DTH companies, according to industry estimates, are slated to command 15 per cent of the cable universe within next four years, primarily by converting cable homes to DTH. |
| Also in the CAS notified areas, a large number of subscribers have preferred to go to the cheaper free-to-air option for which they have to pay Rs 77 per month from an average of over Rs 100 that they were paying earlier. |
| Industry estimates that as much as 60 per cent of the subscribers in the CAS areas have opted for the free-to-air option. |
| "In CAS areas, our ARPU has come done by 25 per cent to 30 per cent. In non-CAS areas, its about 10 per cent to 15 per cent," says a cable operator from Mumbai. |
| Manu Chopra, a north Delhi cable operator says: "Our multi-system operators are not investing in improving our infrastructure so we are loosing our cable subscribers to direct-to-homecompanies. Unless digitalisation of cable happens, people will prefer DTH." |
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