MUMBAI: DTH TV in India is doing very well thank you. Bouoyed by the mandated digitisation of India’s cable TV sector and increased marketing activity by the six direct to home television service providers, the number of subscribers to DTH has climbed to 54.52 million subscribers. That’s the finding of The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in its latest quarterly report ending December 2012.

These numbers were achieved half way through phase I digitisation.

The report also says that the maximum TV channels being carried by any MSO nationally is 267, while traditional analogue cable TV operators were carrying 100 channels. It adds that India has close to 823 private satellite TV channels – in addition to the state owned broadcaster Doordarshan. 184 of these are pay TV channels. The data for the report was collated from 26 broadcast distributors.

The report also says that Indians are taking to the internet more and more with the number of subscribers increasing to 25.33 million from 24.01 million in end September 2012 - registering a quarterly growth rate of 5.49 per cent. The Top 10 ISPs together hold 95.42 per cent of the total internet subscriber base. As far as broadband is concerned, the number of subscribers increased by 2.02 per cent to 14.98 million as against 14.68 million up to end September 2012. Almost 84.82 per cent of these subscribers are using DSL. However, the share of broadband subscription to total internet subscription decreased from 61.16 per cent (end September 2012) to 59.15 per cent (end December 2012).