DD seeks carriage fees on DTH platform

Boasting a subscriber base of one million, public broadcaster Prasar Bharati today said it could charge a carriage fee from private channels on-board its Direct-to-home (DTH) platform from next year.

"We expect that by December next year, our subscriber base would double to almost two million. At that time, we will sit and review matters relating to charging a carriage fee from private channels," Prasar Bharati CEO K S Sarma said.

The public broadcaster's ambitious Rs 160 crore DTH project, DD Direct+, will be launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow.

Sarma said they had already been approached by a private foreign channel, Germany's DW, which was ready to pay it as much as ¤50,000 per annum for being carried on the platform.

Currently, the free-to-air platform carries 19 Doordarshan channels and 13 private channels, which include Star Utsav, Aaj Tak, BBC World, CNN, Sun TV (Tamil), Kairali (Malayalam), Zee Music and Etc Punjabi. Under the existing arrangement, the broadcaster does not pay anything to these channels for having them on board nor charges them anything.

Apart from TV channels, the platform also offers 12 radio channels of AIR, which includes regional channels.

Sarma said Prasar Bharati had received board approval for increasing the number of TV channels to 50 and radio channels to 30 as part of expansion plans of the platform, which requires an investment of about Rs 3,500 for a dish and a set-top box

The Prasar Bharati CEO said equipment was being purchased for the upgradation work, adding that so far Rs 35 crore had been invested in the project.

Encouraged by the enthusiastic response even before the official launch, he said the public broadcaster was contemplating appointing authorised dealers to market its service.

"We have received board clearance for this and would be inviting people with huge financial strength to market our service on a non-exclusive basis. They will also be required to furnish a substantial bank guarantee, about rs 2 crore, for this," sarma said.