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Products > MQSubscribe > Solutions > Satellite/DTH
> Overview
Direct to Home (DTH) businesses is one of the classical business models in Pay TV. It comes out distinctly form the other models including DTT, DTO, SMATV, MMDS models. The DTH business has started about more than a decade back. Today there are 60 platforms in countries around the world. Industry experts are predicting that by the end of 2008, there will be 100 million digital DTH pay-TV subscribers, continuing the DTH reign as the top digital TV platform.
DTH model is usually adopted to quickly provide services to large number of subscribers. From the day of service launch, these businesses aggressively look for acquiring subscribers through attractive marketing campaigns. They liaison with several agents, distributors, dealers to distribute their services and in the process acquire new subscribers. These agents also take care of distribution of equipment (STBs, Smartcards, dishes etc) and the installation of equipment to quickly activate subscribers. The entire activity has to be taken up very systematically as it would involve:
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Bundling and pricing of product and services |
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Follow up for services / subscription |
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Sales through distributors, sales representatives |
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Effective tracking of equipment to avoid pilferage |
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Equipment installations.
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Once the business acquires a decent amount of subscriber base, the challenge would be to retain existing subscribers while acquiring new subscribers. Retaining existing subscribers would mean the service provider should provide the following:
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Continuous service delivery |
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Accurate bills at the end of the month. |
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Convenient payment of bills, through cash, cheque, bank, online payment or direct debit. |
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Payment follow up through reminders |
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Excellent customer service |
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Support for customer relocation |
Hence these businesses usually put the business support system (Customer management & Billing solution (CMB)) in place along with operating support systems, and encryption systems (Conditional access systems). From our experience we have understood that a CMB should be - scalable to handle the growing subscriber base - pre-integrated with conditional access systems to handle provisioning and mediation of services - comprehensive platform to accommodate Customer Care, Inventory Management, Financial Management along with Subscriber information and Order management - communicate with third party accounting systems - integrate with IVR systems, payment gateway, mobile gateway to enable various modes of subscriber ordering and payments.
At MagnaQuest, having closely worked with several DTH Customers, we understand these businesses well. Our Solution MQSubscribe™ supports both prepaid and postpaid models and offers features such as flexible packaging & pricing, promotions, periodic billing in batches, online payments, OSD messaging, PPV/VOD ordering and top up prepaid vouchers through mobile SMS, managing subscriber credit limits, self-care and so on.
Few of the benefits MQSubscribe™ has been deployed at a number of customer sites, worldwide and is delivering the following benefits:
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Facilitates quick launch of new services and ensures faster time to market. Also is flexible to define unlimited number of services
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Features flexible pricing models based on subscription period, subscriber type, region. |
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Manages the Subscriber credit limits and credit balances effectively. |
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Enables flow through Provisioning and Mediation |
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Accommodates advanced payment methods including online payment, direct debit, prepaid vouchers. |
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Fits into the existing business by seamlessly integrating with required third party systems
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Allows service provider to identify patterns and analyze business performance and make important decisions through pertinent reports.
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The system is reliable and scalable to support growth in service provider's business
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