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📡 India’s DTH Market Survives Thanks to IPTV
According to forecasts by Crisil Ratings, India’s direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV operators will continue to lose revenue, but the decline is expected to slow to 3–4% (compared with 5% last year).
The slowdown is driven by a strategic shift. DTH operators are actively expanding IPTV services, offering bundled packages that combine OTT, broadband, and live TV. By September 2025, the IPTV subscriber base had grown nearly fourfold, reaching 2.13 million.
Integrating OTT and live TV via broadband helps reduce subscriber churn to OTT platforms.
Lower discounting on set-top boxes (STBs) and rising marketing revenues help maintain operating margins at 44–45%.
The private DTH subscriber base continues to shrink — from 72 million in 2019 to 53 million by September 2025 — but DTH operators still retain an advantage thanks to regional content and because OTT subscriptions remain more expensive than traditional TV packages.
