A converged Wi-Fi and TV bill is all about value: Excitel’s Varun Pasricha
Excitel COO Varun Pasricha.
The dream of a single wire for broadband and TV is being rekindled. The good old internet protocol TV, or IPTV, may be on the cusp of making a comeback. Will second time be a charm? Varun Pasricha, Chief Operating Officer at Excitel, one of India’s leading internet service providers (ISPs), is quite hopeful. Being one of the early adopters of IPTV back in the day (around 2008-09), his takeaway is the promise of delivering high-speed broadband and Live TV with a single cable to a user’s home, stays relevant. “It did not take off then despite the product being ahead of time,” he tells HT. A lot has changed since.
Excitel is betting big on IPTV to diversify its range of services that consumers can subscribe to. While limited to Delhi and Hyderabad thus far, in the hope to get grips on possible bugs in the package early on, the company plans to have IPTV available across India by September. But the question is, has the very definition of IPTV changed? Considering between then and now, streaming apps, also called OTT or over-the-top platforms, also tend to offer some semblance of Live TV.
Pasricha believes it hasn’t. “There are two ways you can get content. The free-to-air content, which is predominantly advertisement supported, you can put it in your app because it doesn’t need subscription management. There are also aggregators and YouTube feeds for free content,” he says. That’s before we get to the other side of the coin. For the paid content such as Colors or Star Sports channels, IPTV players still need to sign an agreement with broadcasters. “From an inflection perspective, we are seeing this content now is going to increasingly come via IPTV because the ecosystem is now ready,” he says.
Earlier this year, Excitel rolled out a new set of broadband plans, called ‘The Cable Cutter’, which gives users the choice of 200Mbps, 300Mbps or 400Mbps broadband, along with up to 550 Live TV channels, bundled subscriptions for up to 21 video streaming platforms (these include Disney+ Hotstar, Sony Liv, Zee5, Discovery+ and more), or both. Prices for the broadband and streaming apps plan can be as low as ₹554 per month over a 12-month period, while the broadband and Live TV combo can cost ₹604 per month while the complete bundle of broadband with streaming apps and Live TV is priced at ₹734 per month.
With this move, Excitel’s competition diversifies. Pan-India and regional broadband players, including Airtel Xstream, Reliance Jio, ACT Fibernet and Tata Play Broadband, as well as cable and DTH players, including Tata Play, Airtel Xstream digital TV, Dishtv and GTPL Hathway and Den.
Pasricha knows beyond the technology challenge, is one of educating the customer, existing and new. “Even today, 85% of our users are just subscribed to the pure vanilla broadband plan despite our bundle offerings being very cost effective,” he says, taking cognizance of the long road ahead.
“If you just compare, pay ₹200 more over vanilla broadband and you’ll get OTT subscriptions which are worth about ₹800. Despite that kind of value proposition, most of our users choose what they want to do with the Internet. Then as we go bigger and spread our footprint, every type of user becomes a customer and we want to give that option,” he talks about Excitel’s strategy that not only offers bundle choice, but also keeps simple broadband-only plans as options for customers.
“We’ll go to them and say not only does it save you a lot of money, but also upgrades the quality of experience,” says Pasricha.
India’s IPTV market, according to research firm International Market Analysis Research and Consulting Group (IMARC Group), is expected to grow annually at around 18% between now and through till the year 2032. At the end of 2021, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimated India’s IPTV user base at 285,000 subscribers, after years of steady decline as cable and DTH stood steady while streaming apps became popular.
Excitel’s current footprint is covers more than 50 tier-I and tier-II cities in India, that’s up from 15 cities in 2021, but Pascricha says they will not be looking at expanding to any more cities – 2024 will be the year of consolidation, in the areas they’re already present. “2024 for us is a year where we really monetize what we’ve already invested in and fill those networks. That then automatically fuels the next cycle,” he says. The plan is to have coverage in more than 150 cities by the year 2028.
You may have noticed, Excitel’s broadband plans offer a minimum of 200Mbps speeds, symmetrical for download and upload. That’s unlike their competition such as Reliance Jio and Airtel, who offer plans with speeds as low as 30Mbps and 40Mbps respectively. Pasricha calls it a “conscious decision”, one that would give subscribers a true-er broadband experience, for the money they spend.
Is there a sense that the limitations of IPTVs first attempts to land, been solved? Pasricha believes so. He lists reducing cost of equipment, clear regulation and a tech upgrade from copper to fiber, as the reasons why things are looking up. In 2008 and later, IPTV was being delivered by broadband companies over copper cables. That technology required electricity through the length of each copper wire, to amplify signals. This led to significant signal degradation, which is why broadband speeds at that time mostly peaked at 16Mbps depending on the distance of a user’s home to the ISP’s infrastructure. Some lucky users could peak at 24Mbps.
Fiber cables work on the concept of reflection with glass, and do not require electricity to hold signal and do not suffer from degradation over a distance. That is why broadband speeds have increased over time, and IPTV will be more reliable with better picture quality. Does that mean IPTV over time can have an advantage over direct to home (DTH) players who have the limitation of satellite transponder space and cable TV, which doesn’t yet have infrastructure such as set-top boxes (STBs), to deliver a volume of 4K channels?
“At some point, I expect IPTV to evolve to the level where, you know, I could go to a broadcaster such as Star and discuss if we even need to go via the satellite route and instead have a fiber link between the two data centers,” wonders Pasricha, noting some of this may require regulatory clarification before it may be possible. He points to the evolution of TV broadcasts globally, such as in the UK, where a cricket or football match broadcast offers a viewer the choice of multiple viewing angles or a Formula 1 race with access to a driver’s view, for example. That’ll be possible on IPTV in due course, easier than it is for DTH or cable to deliver.
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