Dish TV expects net additions to go up after digitisation

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, RC Venkateish, CEO of Dish TV expects the net additions to go up after digitisation starts. Although, he is not very hopeful about improving margins significantly, Venkateish informs that there is no plan of a price hike before digitisation kicks in.

Below is the edited transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.

Q: Talking about the internals, your ARPUs have improved to Rs 156. Could you tell us how much further can the ARPUs increase over the coming three quarters?

A: Yes, the ARPUs improved from Rs 151 to Rs 156 in the quarter gone by. In July, we took a price increase across all our packs. The price increase ranged from about 7% of the highest pack to about 11% at the base level pack. The impact of that should also flow through.

Those increases were taken in the North packs. The South packs have not been touched as of now. Overall, of the Rs 20 increase that we have taken across the board, the effective increase will be about Rs 14-15 if we exclude the impact of the South. From that if you remove the impact of the service tax and the other deductions, overall we could look at around Rs 6-7 increase due to the effect of the price increase.

Apart from that the other metrics, which are improving like churn has been coming down. So that is also a positive impact on the ARPUs going forward. Over the course of the next couple of quarters, we can certainly look at another Rs 6-7 increase in the ARPU.