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To: slacker711 who wrote (112941)	2/10/2002 5:43:01 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Slacker: Cable subscribers in India. Here are some more numbers for you so that you are not bored. See if you can correlate to wireless subscriber numbers. Some stats: 33 million Cable TV Households. 70 million television households. 40,000 Cable Operators. Average monthly subscription rate of Rs 100 ($2) INTRODUCTION The National Readership Survey 2001 reveals that cable is currently available in 33 million homes. The reach of television in urban areas is 84.7 % in urban areas/towns with population of one million and above and 32.7 % in rural areas. The Survey further reveals that in urban areas, a saturation point has almost been reached. Most of the growth in the last one-year has been in semi-urban and rural areas. A key factor to note is that while the growth in cable industry has been only 7.1 % in the last one year, the potential for growth remains high. It must be kept in mind that the total number of television homes is currently estimated at 70 million while the total number of cable homes is 33 million. This means that there are another 37 million homes in the target reach of the cable industry in terms of current estimates. Viewers in metropolitan cities have the potential to receive approximately 150 TV channels from at least 75 satellites. The importance of television to inform, educate and entertain cannot be overstressed in these troubled times. For the first five years of the last decade, the cable industry mushroomed and indeed thrived in a non-regulatory atmosphere. In 1995, the Cable Network Regulation Act was brought in to regulate the industry. One immediate impact was the entry of large companies, which consolidated the small operators into becoming franchisees/associates of the multi system operators (MSOs). This led to closure of many customer service centers known as head ends as small operators began to take service from the MSOs. Even so, today there are an estimated 40,000 cable operators. Why this is so is because all one needs to do to start a cable business is to get registered at the local post office. The rest is a matter of capturing the subscriber and retaining him. LEVY OF ENTERTAINMENT DUTY State governments soon recognized the growth of the cable industry and began to tax the cable subscriber through the cable operator. Each state used a different yardstick - some taxed the declared number of cable subscribers, others taxed the cable operators and some taxed the head ends. The rates too varied from Rs 4 per subscriber to Rs 30 per subscriber. In most states the entertainment duty officer or the commercial taxes officer administers the entertainment duty on the cable industry. Though as in all revenue departments, inspectors are utilized to verify and mop up additional entertainment taxes, there is no systematic database available with the state governments or even the cable industry itself. Post office registration, though compulsory, is not enforced by the states because it forms part of central legislation and the post office has nothing to do with the cable industry. In such a scenario, the concern of the state governments to bring the entire 33 million base of cable subscribers is naturally a Herculean task. PAY CHANNELS There is one more factor, which should be kept in mind. In the past 5 years, more and more channels have begun to charge subscribers for the content supplied. Free-to-air channels have become pay channels. Today all the major broadcasters like Star, Sony, Zee and even some Doordarshan channels have become pay channels. The average cable subscriber in India pays approximately Rs 100 to receive between 60-70 channels. With all major broadcasters turning pay, a normal operator has nothing left over to pay for entertainment duty or his own operating expenses. Hence there is widespread under declaration to the entertainment duty authorities and the pay channels.