Jan Grondrup-Vivanco, Eutelsat’s regional director for the Middle East, Asia and Scandinavia, discusses the company’s operations in the satellite services market as well as the possible satellite services opportunities in the Indian market with Shipra Arora

What are the areas of Eutelsat’s operations globally ?
Headquartered in Paris, Eutelsat is one of the leading providers of satellite communications solutions. It offers data services and broadcasting services over 23 satellites covering Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and North and South America. While the broadcasting services include consumer TV and radio, TV and radio distribution and contribution links, as part of its data services the company provides services like Internet backbone, Internet access, intranet/extranet, private corporate networks, business services, multimedia (tele-medicine, distance learning, streaming), maritime broadband services and mobile services.

The main stay for the company is satellite broadcasting and Direct To Home (DTH). Broadcasting, in fact, forms the majority of Eutelsat’s business, transmitting almost 1,300 TV channels across the globe and with 77 percent of business coming from this service segment alone. The remaining 23 percent of the business comes from IP via satellite and data services.

What are your specific plans for the Indian market?
In the Indian market Eutelsat is already offering IP via satellite and some broadcasting services. However, we have not yet introduced the DTH broadcasting services in the market here due to regulatory constraints.

For the future, we plan to focus on and strengthen the broadcasting side of the business over the next one year. Currently as part of its broadcast services Eutelsat uplinks channels on its satellite. Some of these channels include Zee TV, B4U and some regional South Indian channels. Being a strong player in Europe, Eutelsat has an advantage in being looked upon as an attractive partner for broadcasting. This year we are putting a dedicated focus on the broadcasting business as there is a lot of demand in India for services like sports exchange, news exchange, stock exchange, etc, and today satellite is the preferred way for providing these services. The potential in the Indian market for broadcasting opportunities can be considered from the fact that the country accounts for almost 15 percent of the world’s total population and boasts of the largest film industry in the world with a $ 1.33 billion turnover.

What is your outlook on the Direct To Home broadcasting opportunity in India?
There is an immense opportunity for DTH in the Indian market. In fact, the opportunity here is almost 10 times that in developed countries like the US and Europe. For every channel there is a scope for broadcasting it in at least ten different languages. So every channel multiplied by ten, that is the kind of scope for DTH in the country. India’s media players have all the ingredients to develop a successful DTH industry.

Currently there is a lot of pent-up demand in the Indian market for DTH. And if not catered to on time, this will lead to a back-door entry of DTH in the country. There are people who will be ready to cater to demand in an illegal manner. Apart from back door entry there are various other issues which are facing the Indian broadcasting market today. While the cable industry is not transparent, leading to rampant under-declaration of subscribers, there is also a general disequilibrium between the area covered by public broadcasters like Doordarshan and commercial broadcasters. This apart, the industry is also facing challenges in terms of distribution to the privileged few.

What are your future plans for value-added services?
Eutelsat also offers its customers value-added services through its Open Sky solution. This is a hybrid broadband delivery solution wherein the customer gets broadband via satellite but uses the terrestrial link for return. The solution was commercially launched in May 2002 in some countries. However, as far as the Indian market is concerned we are in the process of working out and studying the areas where we are facing regulatory hurdles.

Depending on whether the solution suits the dynamics of the Indian market a decision will be taken towards launching Open Sky here. The fast Internet package for the residential customer will cost around $25 per month and for SME and SOHO the cost will be around $120 per month. Apart from unlimited content download and maximum speed of 1 Mbps Open Sky subscription also allows free viewing of Open Sky streaming to push channels, choosing from a wide range of local and international TV channels streamed to the PC and video-on-demand services.

What is your presence in the Indian market?
Eutelsat has been offering its services in the Indian market for the last 18 months. Presently the company does not have a direct presence in the country and is operating through its distributor partners here. We started building up our distribution base in India last year and right now we are having 3-4 active distributors including British Telecom in the country. The marketing and sales activities are done by both Eutelsat and these distributor partners. This apart, the partners bundle our services offerings with their equipments and hardware to provide complete solutions to the customers. Since Eutelsat is mainly into B2B marketing we try to find the right distributors and service providers who will represent the company in the market here.