The face of India’s direct-to-home (DTH) market has evolved considerably over the past three and a half years with the entry of private players. From a single-player market in 2005 (the first private player was Dish TV), when the market was growing at 42,000 subscribers per month, it moved into a content resolution phase in April 2006. During this phase, lasting till end 2007, the market witnessed the entry of Tata Sky and Sun Direct and overall, digitisation was triggered in the country. At this point of time, the industry was growing at 170,000 subscribers per month. And over the last year or so, the competition has increased further as two new entrants in Big TV and Digital TV made their foray. Post this, the subscriber growth rate rose considerably, touching the 500,000-mark per month, according to Dish TV. With competition driving growth, the DTH market crossed 10 million subscribers mark by the end of 2008. In its earnings release for the third quarter of fiscal 2009, released towards the end of January, market leader Dish TV mentioned that the total number of DTH households are projected to reach 57 million by the end of 2015. For its part, Dish TV, which claims to have 48 percent market share, added 789,000 subscribers in the third quarter (ending December 2008), as compared to 529,000 new subscribers added during the second quarter, registering an increase of 49 percent. Its average subscriber acquisition cost for the quarter was US$58 and this increment was due to the depreciation of the Rupee. Overall, Dish TV’s main expenses include subscriber related expenses, employees and administrative cost, while its revenue comes from DTH services, bandwidth charges, value added services etc.