Mumbai : The leading Satellite broadcaster Star India has issued a notice to the DTH operator Reliance Digital TV couple of day before, notifying the failure of the DTH operator in clearing the pending dues pertaining to the subscription payment for sharing Star India’s signals to the subscribers of Reliance Digital TV DTH.
According to the notice issued by Star India during the first week of December, it will disconnect the signals of all its channels to Reliance Big TV for non-payment of dues if it fails the clear the payment within three weeks from the date of issuance of notice.
The broadcaster provides over 37 channels including Star Plus, Life Ok, Star Gold, Star Movies, Star World, FX, FX Crime, Channel V and Regional GEC channels like Star Vijay, Asianet, Suvarna etc…
Reliance Digital TV DTH is one among the leading DTH operators in Indian Market, which is making losses like any other DTH operator in the country and has a subscriber base of 4.82 million as of 30th June, 2014.
As per TRAI’s recent report, the DTH operators in India have done a combined investment of around Rs 11,500/- Crore and none of them have achieved break even till date.
Despite collecting advance payment from the subscribers, Reliance Digital TV’s failure to clear the subscription dues to Star India exposes the poor financial health of the DTH operator.
Market Sources confirmed that Reliance Management under Anil Ambani is looking for a potential buyer to sell the majority stakes and exit the DTH business. It may be noted that there was a speculation in the market on merger of Reliance Digital TV with Sun Direct DTH. However, the deal didn’t materialise for unknown reasons.
