Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal on Wednesday said the company does not intend to enter content creation business and would only focus on the aggregation and distribution of content. According to Vittal, there are currently problems in the distribution and monetisation of content creation businesses such as those offered through OTT entertainment apps. Airtel can help those companies solve the challenges by being a carriage provider and leveraging its strong mobile subscriber base of over 330 million, he said, while also urging the government for a level-playing field amongst the DTH operators and streaming applications.
“DTH is subject to an 8% licence fee, most complex pricing regime that has ever been invented by man. If you are a DTH player, you can not invest in content company as per cross-holding restrictions,” Vittal said at the FICCI Frames 2023 event in Mumbai. Despite offering similar content, the streaming applications are not subject to any regulation. Further, there is no licence fee charged from OTTs, no pricing regime and cross-holding restrictions. Cross media ownership is the ownership of multiple media businesses by a person or entity. These businesses may include print, television, radio and various online entities. When a person or entity owns any two of these media outlets, it is considered to be involved in cross media ownership.
“This (no regulations on streaming apps) in a way is actually breaking the back of the subscription industry,” Vittal said, adding that going forward OTTs with paid subscription might face scalability issues. “If there are 80 million (pay-TV users) who can’t pay more than Rs 150 and 40 million who can pay Rs 350, why they will pay Rs 1,500 for 40 pieces of OTT content? You will need an aggregator and carriage to be combined to solve the problem,” Vittal added. Bharti currently provides movies, web series and TV shows of its partners such as SonyLiv, Lionsgate, Eros Now, etc, via Airtel Xstream app.It also offers DTH services under Airtel Digital vertical. On the other hand, its competitor Jio hosts its own content through JioCinema and even buys movie/shows rights.
Airtel recently also approached Trai for a one service-one rate system. Airtel has sought a regulatory mechanism prohibiting differential pricing by telecom operators for content on their apps if it is also available on DTH and Cable TV channels.“Regulatory framework must include all modes of delivery of broadcast content across all platforms irrespective of underlying technology used. Same content should be available across all platforms at same price and there should be pricing parity irrespective of technology,” Airtel had written to Trai.
With regard to the market of converged offering which is the linear TV content and OTT, Airtel CEO expects the industry to see 20 million connected homes with full converged experience.