'As regards DTH, I prefer India to China'

IN CONVERSATION

Sue Taylor, vice-president (Asia Pacific) of News Corp's conditional access company NDS, specialises in developing and executing market entry strategies for Rupert Murdoch's content security firm.

She established NDS operations in China, South Korea, and, more recently, in Mumbai in India. Taylor, who was attending the India Digital Networks Summit in New Delhi, spoke to Shuchi Bansal on India's pay TV market.

How important is the India operation to the company?

Not many people realise it, but India has the largest concentration of NDS employees. We employ 3,500 people in 10 countries. Of this, the Bangalore R&D centre has 750.

A year ago we started our Mumbai operations to deal with India as a customer. NDS looks after the operational side of Tata Sky (the Star-Tata DTH joint venture) and offers a 24X7 service for its uplink in Delhi. Now we are recruiting like crazy.

Is this for new business?

Actually we have signed a very big customer in India. But we still don't have the permission to announce it. It is a DTH company.

What about cable?

Hathway Cable is our customer. Next week, we are launching a new product specifically for the Indian cable industry which demanded an inexpensive but good quality product. Digital cable will grow, as earlier CAS was being pushed by regulation, but now competition will force cable to go digital.

Which pay TV platform "" DTH, cable or IPTV "" is fastest growing in the world?

It varies from market to market. Korea is the digital hub of Asia. It is actually more advanced in terms of broadband connections than Europe. Still cable dominates most Asian markets, especially India where it is still analogue.

But now cable companies are being forced to go digital not because of regulation but because of competition.

How large is the US pay TV market?

There are 120 million pay TV subscribers in the US. In India, cable touches 80 million homes. It will be an interesting pay TV market as most markets have one or two DTH players but India will soon have five to six DTH players.

What will be India's pay TV market size?

There are many projections. One of them says by 2012 DTH will have 18 million subscribers. It is hard to project figures on cable. My estimates always go wrong.

Are your set-top boxes interoperable as mandated by the Indian government?

We comply with whatever the Indian government mandates. We have to make our boxes interoperable.

In theory, interoperable means that you put a box in a home and it should work even if you change your service provider. What happens in practice is that if you change the operator you do not get any advance features.

Interoperability works at the base level of service. So companies are offering commercial interoperability where they can exchange the box.

Where does India stand in comparison to China?

India is an incredibly dynamic market place. It has a content industry that produces great work. China is a cable market. It has no DTH. You can't have foreign content there. Digital is all about content and choice. China is really not a pay TV market since digital content is not different from analogue. I prefer India.