Bharti Airtel gets LoI for DTH service

Cybermedia News

New Delhi

August 8th, 2007

Despite shortage of satellites to accommodate DTH service, Sunil Mittal
promoted Bharti Telemedia is ballistic to launch its services by March 2008. In
an exclusive interaction Atul Bindal, president, Airtel Broadband and Telephone
Services said that the company is likely to launch the DTH service by March.
"We are in the process of launching the service. Initially we have plans to
launch the service in three to four major cities," Bindal said.

However, he denied sharing the government approval for launching the DTH
services. "The government approval is in the process, I would not be able
to share the details on it now," he said.

In a related development, sources in Bharti Airtel informed that the company
has received the Letter of Intent (LoI) today from the Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting offering DTH services.

According to experts the DTH arena is already crowded with multiple players.
Currently there are three operators - Zee Dish TV, DD Direct and Tata Sky. Sun
Direct, Reliance Blue Magic and Bharti Telemedia are in the queue to launch the
service. Sun and Reliance have already received the license. Most recently
Videocon had also applied for the license.