Sumangali Cable Vision (SCV), the Sun Network-owned leading cable distribution company in Tamil Nadu, is expanding its base to add the city of Hyderabad within its servicing area.

"From September, we will start operation in Hyderabad too," SCV's chief executive Dayanidhi Maran told indiantelevision.com on the sidelines of a seminar on CAS organised by CETMA in New Delhi today.

Pointing out that at present the company has cable services in six cities in Tamil Nadu, Maran, however, said there are no plans to start operations in North India.

"We have enough on our hands and don't want to go to areas where there are already established players," he said. On its cable networks across Tamil Nadu, apart from cable TV, SCV also provides its subscribers net-over-cable for which rates are different depending on the usage and various packages.

Though Maran was hesitant to comment on Sun starting a direct-to-home (DTH) TV platform, he did admit that there are various issues which need to be addressed by the government before Sun can even think of applying for a DTH licence.

Maran also admitted that the investment needed to implement CAS would be huge and the cost has to be shared by everybody concerned.

"I think the MSOs and cable operators (who walk the last line into the subscribers' homes) will have to share the cost with cable operators bearing a majority of the cost to be incurred," he said.

Maran, however, was not forthcoming how and from where such huge amounts of money would be raised by MSOs and cable operators. "It would be a huge investment is all that I can say," Maran said.