Tata Sky slashes hardware rate by 50%

Tata Sky, the joint venture of Tata group and Star network, responded the strong answer to its close rival Dish TV by slashing its hardware price nearby 50 percent in the strong Direct to Home price war competition. Earlier Essel group and Zee Network backed Dish TV had restructured its price to occupy the more target audiences in India.

To heating the DTH price war and to reaching more customers, Tata Sky has reduced its hardware price from Rs. 2,999 to Rs. 1,499 excluding installation and subscription charges. Tata Sky had reduced the price up to 65% from the introductory price of Rs. 3,999.

“In a bid to provide quality DTH services and to reach out to the masses, we have decided to reduce the cost of our set top box.,” said MD & CEO of Tata Sky Vikram Kaushik. “This slashing is for not the limited period offer but everlasting,” he further said.

However, the monthly subscription charges, as per subscribing package and one-time installation charges (Rs. 1000) is remain unchanged.

On the other hand, few days before Dish TV had revised its price tag and re-launched it in three different packages ranging from Rs. 3,150- Rs. 4,999.

The market experts believe that this price war is also a part of policy to confront their forthcoming rivals which is likely to come up soon with some fascinating packages while both the DTH players have denied to be a part of confronting policy.

Anil Ambani owned ADAG and Sunil Bharti Mittal owned Bharti is preparing themselves to jump in the market. The Indian consumers are waiting for them with expecting further price war with the arrival of both the corporate giant.

Both the DTH players have also launched the high-end set top box product to surpass each other and increase their masses. Tata Sky has announced to introduce high digitech personal video recorder (PVR) that will allow subscribers to pause live television, record multiple programmes and enjoy true video-on-demand facilities.

Dish TV has already launched its high end set top box Digital Video Recorder (DVR) in estimating to occupy more market.

Since, now Tata Sky has got more than 1.5 million subscribers only in India in just 16 months, after entering in the market.

"The rapid subscriber ramp-up in a short span of 16 months has resulted in large cost savings for the company, which it has decided to pass on to customers.” said Tata sky in released statement. “It is more than fair that we share the benefits of this feat with them,” said Vikram explaining why company has reduced the price.

Speaking over PVR, he said, “While it’s difficult to put a figure to the PVR market size. I expect 10-20% of our subscribers would opt for them.

Stating over DTH technology in the released statement Kaushik said, “We are confident that this pricing will catapult the process of digitalisation across the country and will help boost the government’s efforts to digitise India by 2010 for the Commonwealth games.”

Tata Sky has reached nearby 5,000 towns across the country and has also included some recently launched channels like 9X, NDTV Imagine, UTV Bindass, NDTV MetroNation, in its bouquet. Now it has more than 150 TV channels and services in its suite. "Actve Darshan," "Actve Learning" and "Actve Stories" are amongst the recently launched interactive services.