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India may become uplinking hub

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

IRIS

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India has the potential to become an uplinking hub for South East Asia, says

Amitabh Kumar, director (corporate), Zee TV, Earth Station and Uplinking. At

present, India has 140 channels which includes eight major satellite channels.

Eighty per cent of broadcasting is done offshore and 90 per cent of transponders

are on foreign satellites. As a result the revenue goes to overseas operators.

This is expected to change as the finance minister has announced a reduction

in basic custom duty rate on import of certain specified equipment for setting

up an earth station for broadcasting. Though the cost of setting uplinking

facilities in India is around Rs 7 lakhs/month compared to Rs 2.5 lakh/month

globally, it is believed that broadcasters can save more than Rs 60 lakhs per

channel as advertising revenue is expected to rise.

At present, most top broadcasters such as Zee, Star and Sony have their

uplinking facilities outside India and receive their revenue abroad. To prevent

foreign exchange outflow, government allows companies with export earnings to

advertise on such satellite channels. Now irrespective of export income, anyone

can advertise on channels as uplinking is done from India. Moreover, the

advertising rate here is expected to fall which may boost advertising revenue of

the channels.

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