Dish TV to Offer Playjam Gaming Services in India

Dish TV will be India’s first Direct-To-Home provider which will provide gaming services as a special feature on its set top boxes. The private DTH, which is promoted by Subhash Chandra owned-Essel Group, gotten into an agreement with US-based Open TV for transferring this technology for around $100 million over 5 years. Playjam is a gaming product from Open TV stable and would be unveiled by the end of this month.

Jawahar Goel, business head, Dish TV says, “We are going to launch Playjam on our platform by the end of July. By 2007, we would have another gaming package. We are also looking to have a range of interactive content in movies, music and sports too. With the parity in content, DTH players would have to compete on the basis of price, brand, quality of service and VAS. It would be like the Telecom companies, all of which provide voice and text connectivity, but still compete and VAS is a crucial parameter.”

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India have denied content exclusivity and so now providers will have to depend on Value Added Service (VAS). Gaming is catching up in India on a large scale and so this option seems to be the best.