Friday, January 31, 2014: In 2014, India will be completing phases three and four of the TV digitisation plan that has been rolled out by the Telecom regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). This implies that Indian subscribers need to purchase an additional 75 million set top boxes (STBs) in 2014.
According to a Business World report, in the first two phases of digitisation which covered the metros and tier 1 cities,, around 30 million STBs were sold. But there are only a couple of makers of STBs in the country and the cost of importing STBs from abroad has risen sharply with the government increasing the import duty on set top boxes during the last Union Budget by five per cent.
China based NationalChip plans to tap this market. The company is supplying chips to makers like Videocon, ABS and MyBox. The problem is that India does not possess the wherewithal for making semiconductor chips. Patrick Dou, vice-president, Hangzhou NationalChip Science and Technology says: “Since the semiconductor eco-system is not available in India, we provide the chip to make STBs in India.”
Pune-based Millenium Semiconductors is importing the main chip from NationalChip and many other components from component makers across the world. Patrick Dou pointed out that unlike in making electronic components, the chip for STB has to be customised for meeting the needs of different multi-system operators (MSOs). Thus, the chips are for specific customers. Even though the Indian market is just getting STBs for digital TV, Dou pointed to the stage when the consumer can make use of the cable TV connection to get access to broadband connectivity. At the moment, this is happening only in a few pockets in India.
