Over the past three years, the four major Direct To Home (DTH) service providers have seen a significant drop in their subscriber base. As reported in TRAI’s Indian Telecom Services Yearly Performance Indicators 2023-2024, active pay subscribers fell from 69.57 million on March 31, 2021, to approximately 61.97 million by March 31, 2024. The decline has been steady: 66.92 million in March 2022 and 65.25 million in March 2023.
As of March 31, 2024, Tata Play Limited leads the DTH market with a 32.53% share of net pay active subscribers. Bharti Telemedia Ltd. follows with 28.45%, Dish TV India holds 20.46%, and Sun Direct has 18.57%.
In the Multi-System Operator (MSO) sector, there are 880 registered MSOs with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB). Among these, 11 MSOs and one Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) operator have subscriber bases exceeding one million. GTPL Hathway tops the list with 9.11 million subscribers, followed by Siti Networks Ltd. with 5.30 million and Hathway Digital Ltd. with 5.29 million. Thamigzha Cable TV Communication Ltd. and Kerala Communicators Cable Ltd. have 3.81 million and 3.50 million subscribers, respectively.
