Grey mkt in cable television services

The grey market for cable TV services in India has grown hand in hand with the overall sector, and has touched $1.1 billion in 2008 from $965 million in 2007, says a report by the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA).The $1.1 billion figure represents the cost of piracy in the country and is also a proxy indicator of the magnitude of loss to the state exchequer. It largely consists of cable connections that are under-reported by cable operators.
India has the highest level of piracy in the cable sector in the entire Asia-Pacific region.It accounts for almost 65% of the total revenue loss of $1.76 due to cable piracy in the region. Thailand accounts for the second highest cable piracy cost in the region at $180 million.
For the region as a whole, on the other hand, cost of piracy of cable TV services has gone up 8% since 2007; it was about $1.53 billion then. The year before, in 2006, it was an estimated $1.13 billion, equal to the domestic piracy market at present.The number of leaked or unreported subscribers (in India) for 2008 is pegged at 21.64 million. This is almost one-fourth of the 85 million existing cable connections in the country and around one-sixth of the 125 million homes having a TV set. The increase in the number of undeclared customers is up 7.6% since 2007; India reported an under declaration of about 20.11 million subscribers then. However, CASBAA estimates that the actual growth in piracy cost is around 15%, due to factors like increased average revenue per user and currency movements."India's digital pay-TV market has been driven by the recent exceptional growth in the digital DTH market. With 1.7 million digital cable subscriptions, India is finally taking off," said Marcel Fenez, chairman of CASBAA.
Sanjiv Kainth, country manager, Irdeto, the leading digital content security provider, said, "Cable piracy is the most important challenge that confronts the cable industry today. There is a constant race that goes on between the hackers and service providers. Investment in digitalisation, either policy-guided or through private initiative, is the most ef fective solution to this menace."