Dish TV expects the Indian DTH market to grow five times in the next 4 years. Dish TV CEO Vinay Agarwal said,
We believe that the DTH market will grow exponentially and is estimated to touch 30 million subscribers by 2012 from 6-7 million now. We aim to add five million subscribers by March 2009.
In a separate yet related development, the contentious issue of
payment of carriage fees by broadcasters to the cable industry for carrying their channels has brought forward divisions among the various stakeholders while the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) remains undecided on the subject. Some of the new broadcasters have suggested auctioning parts of cable spectrum as a possible solution towards fixing the ground rules for carriage fees that is charged by the large cable operators from broadcasters, Multi System Operators (MSOs) have called for terming carriage fees as placement fees. The direct-to-home (DTH) firms are not keen on fixing any sort of legal norms for carriage fees.