RCom to revolutionise DTH service with Big TV

It’s time to rejoice for the quality picture lovers and a warning to the existing Direct-to-Home (DTH) service providers, as Anil Ambani led Reliance Communication on August 19 has launched its DTH service – Reliance Big TV Ltd - with big bang in the economic capital of India, Mumbai.

‘Big TV’ has the most advanced MPEG4 technology that would ensure its customers to provide best quality sound and superior clarity pictures, as RCom claimed during its launching ceremony.

This move of RCom may catalyse the DTH war and eventually benefit the consumers, be the same again as Reliance brought revolution in the telecom world, as market experts believe.

Introducing its new product service, RCom official said that the company is targeting to cover a 40% market share within one year from today. At present, the overall DTH has covered only 7.5 percent of Indian market that translates into only 6-million subscribers while there are as much as 8-crore cable subscribers in India.

“From 6 million now, we see around 60 million subscribers by 2015. In the next 12 months alone, the DTH platform will add around 12 to 13 million subscribers,” said Arun Kapoor, the Chief Executive Officer of Reliance Big TV Ltd.

Viewing the large market, Bharti telecom and Videocon industries are also preparing to enter in the market, as Kapoor cited ‘those entries would help to penetrate the market.’

Commenting upon the current scenario of the DTH service, Arun said, “The home entertainment service market in spite of serving close to 120 million TV households for decades has still not delivered the quality, choice and service experience leading to customer delight”, while elaborating the unique quality of Big TV he added, “Big TV DTH would be the first and only home entertainment service to deliver fully digital picture and sound, choice of channels for every family member and highest levels of customer service across the country.”

Adding in it, Sanjay Behl, the Group Head (Brand and Marketing), Reliance Communication said, “We will also be offering several innovative and unique features in our services over the next few months. Other players offer their services using the MPEG2 platform, but we will do so on the advanced MPEG4 platform. We will be adding some more transponders in the next few months and can offer up to 300-350 channels by the first quarter next year. We will also offer 8-10 HD (high definition) channels by the year-end.”

Moreover, speaking upon the most specific feature of Big TV Arun Kapoor said that user could record his/her favourite programmes when he/she was out of home and later could watch it. At present, this facility is available only in USA.

Presently, RCom is offering Big TV with 202 channels including 32 movie channels that can be accessed from any television as well as video on demand facility as per customer’s choice at the initial stage and the introductory price is Rs.1,490 only that can go to Rs.3,990 depending upon the subscription plan. The initial subscription is available with a three-month complimentary subscription that can be subscribed from 2,000 exclusively branded Reliance Stores besides Reliance Web World stores, the release official statement said.

The press statement also informed that it has set up a call centre with customer handling capacity of over 50,000 calls daily in 11 Indian languages, including English, across two locations to enable speedy response to customer queries. It has a staff capable of installing over 15,000 connections daily within 48-72 hours.

Speaking upon the marketing strategy, Behl said that RCom has made available BIG TV at 1-lakh outlets across 6,500 towns in the initial stage from where consumers can buy set top box and subscribe the DTH plan. “We have decided to get the biggest TV stars to endorse our campaign and have already bought 15,000 spots on television for the next three weeks,” added Mr Behl.

Besides Big TV, Rcom is also planning to launch Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) soon, as per official.