The success of the Indian Space Research Organisation as the country's space agency is unquestionable. However, despite ambitious plans, the INSAT fleet has consistently fallen short of meeting domestic demand. For international operators, revenues from leasing satellite transponders remain hard to come by, as they have to contend with preferential treatment to the domestic fleet, regulated pricing, and short term contracts from service providers.
The overall demand for Ku- and C-band bandwidth is expected to grow at a healthy rate of about 1.5 to 2 percent and maintain levels that will not be met by domestic supply alone. This presents windows of opportunity for industry leaders and emerging operators to satisfy the demand for services like DTH, VSAT, and rural connectivity across the country, with the former market attracting the most interest from regional satellite operators via Ku-band. At a subscriber base of 7 million and growth expected of 20 percent year-on-year, it is not surprising there are already five DTH operators vying for a piece of this action with a sixth waiting in the wings. The projected surge in demand for digital television distribution is also expected to spill over into C-band with Headend-in-the-Sky platforms for digital cable distribution.
NSR has devoted special attention to the VSAT industry which, with its majority of deployments and revenues from the banking and financial services vertical, is poised to grow to more than 175,000 sites by 2013. Though banks, ATMs, and stock broking houses will remain leaders in deployments, emerging applications such as rural connectivity for e-Governance, digital cinema, and cellular backhaul are cumulatively estimated to reach the scale of their early-adoptive counterparts over a five-year period.