Welcome Reliance to DTH arena

NEW DELHI: Anil Ambani group company Reliance Bluemagic has become the fourth private player to secure licence to offer direct to home (DTH) services and plans to start operations by the fourth quarter of this year.

An agreement to this effect was signed by Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) president AN Sethuraman and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting director Arvind Kumar.

According to sources, Reliance Bluemagic (RB) plans to start the DTH service by this year-end.

With this, RB becomes the fourth private player after Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun TV to have secured licence to operate in the fast-growing DTH segment.

RB's foray into DTH is a part of the ambitious plans by ADAG to expand in the media and entertainment business, where it has started a slew of services.

In the big screen entertainment, group company Adlabs plans to have 125 screens across India by September.

In the FM Radio segment, the Group has got licence to operate in 40 cities across India and has already made 17 of them operational. It runs FM channel under the brand Big FM.

Recently, the group had picked up stake in TV Today and made an open offer to acquire up to 35 per cent in the media house, which runs leading Hindi channel Aaj Tak, Tej and English news channel Headlines Today. It also has stakes in NDTV, Zee enterprises and UTV Software.

ADAG had also planned to bombard the Internet medium with different services such as Zapak.com, the gaming portal where it would invest $ 100 million; Bigadda, a social networking site which is currently in testing phase.