Airtel Digital TV: DTH Operator Working On Providing Broadband Services Through Set Top Boxes

Teleco Bharti Airtel’s Direct to Home (DTH) service Airtel Digital TV is in works to launch a set-top box (STB) which will also offer broadband service, the Television Post reports.

Speaking about the set-top box, MD and CEO of Bharti Airtel, India and South Asia, Gopal Vittal said that the service will offer a full converged entertainment experience and will allow the telecom a converged play over multiple services.

“One of the things we are looking at is to bring in a box, which will kind of offer a full converged entertainment as well as the capacity to deliver broadband. This will happen soon, and we are very excited that once we do that, then it is a full converged play that we can potentially deliver across multiple spaces,” Vittal said.

The new tariff order helped the DTH business to grow at a healthy pace with Airtel Digital TV adding 630,000 subscribers in the first quarter of FY20. Vittal added. Vittal also added that Airtel is trying to raise the average revenue per user (ARPU).

Further, Airtel is in works with partners like Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon for deeper and distributed content caching, said Bharti Airtel CFO – India & South Asia Badal Bagri.