Prasar Bharati hoping to gain revenues from Mobile TV offerings

India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has said that they are working on a new business model which would make Mobile TV services the major mode of revenue generation for them.

The television broadcasting company is generally bound by social obligations to raise the revenues and has been looking at several ways to boost the revenues to sustain itself.

Prasar Bharati CEO B S Lalli said in a statement that they are very optimistic about this new service offering which they had launched earlier this year on a pilot basis.

They are working with the world’s largest mobile phone company Nokia on this initiative. Their mobile TV technology is based on the DVB-H technology and it is currently available to subscribers within a radius of 10-12 km from Akashvani Bhavan on Parliament Street in New Delhi.

They are currently serving just around eight channels of Doordarshan on the mobile TV platform. They are soon going to increase this to 16.

Lalli added: “The mobile TV could become a major source of our revenue generation if everything goes well. Currently, the project is in pilot phase and we will be investing about Rs 100 crore.”