The myth of the missing DTH subscriber

A change in the way DTH homes are calculated shows that over 18 million homes are missing. Why does this cause so much joy?

When there is bad news about traditional media, the reaction from analysts and social media experts is almost predictable. Everything is promptly attributed to “the digital revolution”, “cord cutting” and what not. 

That is what happened once again, last week. A report in The Hindu Business Line on October 2 highlighted that DTH operators lost 20 million homes after the New Tariff Order or NTO was implemented by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in February this year. The report used Trai data.

This raises three questions. 

Question one, why did the number fall? Because the yardstick used to report DTH numbers