Reliance Communications has placed an order for 5 million DTH set-top boxes with vendors from Korea, China and Taiwan to be delivered between July and December next year. The vendors include Hyundai, UEC, Thomson, Hunmax, Homecast, Koship and Kaon Media, according to a report by Business Standard.
The current landed cost of an MPEG4-enabled set top box in global markets ranges between $50 to $60 based on size. RCom is looking at innovative ways to reduce the overall cost of set top boxes by upto 25 per cent, thereby procuring MPEG4 set top boxes at prices lower than the prevailing MPEG2 boxes.
The company, which plans to launch its DTH services under the Big TV brand, has already placed orders for the launch, scheduled in a few weeks. RCom has already received stocks of close to 250,000 set-top boxes in its warehouse and another shipment of
250,000 is scheduled to arrive in a week.
In case the need arises to fill stocks in the market, provisions are being made to airlift the set top boxes from the vendors' premises and placed on the market shelves within 36?72 hours, at any retail location in the country.
The company plans to get four to six models of set-top boxes with varied capabilities including some with video recording facility in an inbuilt memory disk or DVD drive. The recording-enabled set-top boxes would have capabilities to preset recording of any programme even when no one is present at home.
The Reliance Technology Innovation Team is closely working on the finer modalities of the features of the boxes for specific customer segments. They will be in close contact with the vendors over the duration of the contract for continued enrichment of
features based on feedback.
A month ago, the company had stated having over 45,000 customers using the services on a trial basis.
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