Should Indian cable TV operators become telcos?

(Tony Worthington is the Global Head for Telecoms, Media & Technology at Standard Chartered Bank. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Tony Worthington

The mobile sector in India is now well established and is also beginning to form the core of a “Quad-Play” marketplace in Indian communications.

Quad-Play means four methods of communication service provision to the consumer - fixed-line (plain old telephony), mobile, broadband and TV.

If you are a Bharti Airtel, Reliance or Tata Teleservices (TTSL) mobile subscriber today in Delhi then the chances are that you pay a sister company owned by one of these entities more than just your mobile phone calls.

All now are able to provide fixed-line voice and broadband services in some areas. Significantly, all now provide TV services through their Direct to Home ("DTH") satellite TV, which started in India in 2005.

TTSL's sister company Tata Sky has been in the market for four years now, but in the past twelve months Bharti has launched Airtel TV and Reliance has launched Reliance Big.

DTH is a direct form of competition to the many cable television (CATV) operators in India today. Today there are around 18 million DTH subscribers in India. Standard Chartered estimates the number of subscribers will grow to around 50 million by March 2013.

The CATV industry - at least in analogue form - has been around since the early 1990s. Today there are around 72 million subscribers but this number looks to be stabilising.