International Herald Tribune
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India is considering raising the cap on foreign investment in direct-to-home satellite television operators to 74 percent from the current 49 percent, a senior government official said.
DTH serves a small portion of the Indian television audience, and research firm Media Partners Asia forecasts the sector will expand to 25 million subscribers by 2012. ”That is being discussed,” Uday Verma, additional secretary in the ministry of information and broadcasting, said at an industry conference of the proposal, without elaborating.
Verma said the ministry may also reduce the share of revenue DTH firms have to pay the government. Firms have to pay 10 percent of their annual gross revenue to the government but have been asking for that to be reduced to 6 percent of adjusted gross revenue, which is the revenue they get from broadcasting operations alone.