You have to give it to the Hong Kong-based James Field, director solutions, NDS Asia Pacific. Field might be staring at another tough assignment as he looks to push the conditional access solutions products that News Corp's technology arm has on offer in India, but he is convinced that this is the right time to be here.
Despite the sorry state that the conditional access system (CAS) rollout is in at present, Field believes that there is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. Brave words at a time when no one can claim to have a handle on how CAS will roll out in India.
He stresses that NDS' commitment to India is borne out by the fact that there is a 100-strong team in the Bangalore office working on solutions customised to local requirements.
Field, who is not new to India - having co-ordinated Star India's failed bid in 1997 to launch direct-to-home (DTH) operations in the country - met up with indiantelevision.com to offer an overview of the immense possibilities that he believes CAS offers:
What are the products NDS is offering in the Indian market? Our cornerstone product is the NDS open Videoguard CAS (includes the smartcards), which is available in cable, terrestrial, satellite and IP. We are a clear world leader there.
CAS on its own isn't enough, so we offer consultancy/ integration services to help customers choose from the wide variety of implementations and help match up their launch plans with the partners they have chosen.
Then there is the set-top box (STB) middleware and the EPG (electronic programming guide). EPG is an application that runs on the STB that I regard as the most complicated application, because it is the store front for new services to come up.
Whether it is TV services, PPV services or interactive services, the EPG is a shop window. We are again one of the world's leading EPG producers on multiple platforms with different languages.
Another area is games. Even a low-end STB like the Hathway box is capable of running games, if they choose to do so in future. |
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At this point, where do you stand as far as active paid subscribers are concerned? In Asia we are at the two million mark. We are a leader globally as well. |
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And in India? We only count people who are actively subscribing. Therefore, in India it would tally with the thousands of CAS subscribers that Hathway has at present (around 4,000 to 5,000 in Chennai, 1,200 in Delhi, 600-700 in Mumbai, according to information available with indiantelevision.com). |
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Considering the poor penetration of CAS due to the myriad problems here, there are talks that the way forward could be to offer it as a premium product. Do you see CAS pushing ahead as a cream offering? If we take the mobile phone analogy, when it was first launched, it was a cream product. India is large enough and has enough people who can afford to pay, to make that kind of business model work. However, for true return on investment, you need to have mass market penetration.
So while CAS can be offered as a premium product, the only way to truly get the revenue back and build your business is to address not just cream, but the whole way down - cream to vanilla - and offer a scalable service that can match the ability to pay of all the potential subscribers.
Around the world, successful pay TV operators essentially give away the STBs. It (the box) is something you need to get into the consumers' homes in order to sell them the services.
In India, we're not seeing that yet and I think the first operator that makes that kind of move is the one who's going to put it (CAS) in hand.
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