27-04-2008
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Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Cochin
Posts: 134
Rep Power: 2  |  India is well placed in mobile TV
Quote: Sanjiv Kainth, Irdeto's country manager, India, and head, south-east Asia, is eagerly awaiting the government's nod on the nationwide roll-out of Conditional Access System (CAS) to make the cable sector digital. India is a growing market for Irdeto, a subsidiary of the Netherlands based media group Naspers, which provides solutions for content protection in digital TV, IPTV and mobile environments. Kainth spoke to Ashish Sinha on Irdeto's take on the Indian digital TV industry. Excerpts:
What is Irdeto's share in the Indian market?
Irdeto has a substantial share of the Indian and south Asian market. Currently, there are four DTH platforms in the South Asian region and three more in the pipeline.
Irdeto is providing encryption solutions to three of the seven operators. DTH companies like Sun Direct and Dialog (Sri Lanka) are operational and successful.
In the digital cable segment, Irdeto is present on two of the five large Multi System Operators (MSOs) in operation, namely, Hathway and the Sun TV-backed cable network. Large independent cable operators like Manthan (Kolkata), ICC (Pune) and Seven Star (Mumbai) are also our clients.
DTH or CAS, which technology will penetrate homes faster?
For some reason, the term CAS in India is construed to mean Digital Cable. The difference between DTH and Digital Cable (read CAS) is only the medium of delivery.
The former is via satellite and the latter via cable networks. In my opinion, both DTH and Digital Cable (read CAS) will be successful in India and co-exist. DTH being a satellite platform has greater penetration and has managed to take television to areas where people had nothing or very little to watch.
Comment on Irdeto's global operations...
Globally, we've been growing at over 20 per cent and this should continue for the next two years. Pay TV is a relatively recent phenomenon in India so we expect this market to contribute substantially to a fast growing company.
How important is China?
China is another very fast growing and important market for us. Irdeto has the largest share among all foreign content security companies in China.
Within Irdeto, there is so much focus on the Asia markets that the company's CEO Graham Kill has shifted his base from Hoofddorp (Holland) to Beijing.
How do you see the mobile TV growth in India?
Mobile TV has picked up in a big way across the globe. In this space, we have customers in 11 countries including Germany, Australia, South Africa, China, Russia and Korea.
Some very interesting statistics emerge from Korea which boasts of 1.5 million mobile TV users. However, surprisingly, 60 per cent of these people watch mobile TV at home rather than while on the move.
India is very well placed in the Mobile TV ecosystem. With an average of 7 million to 8 million new mobile phone users being added every month, the future of Mobile TV seems very bright in the country.
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