When contacted Essel Group executive vice-president and corporate affairs head A Mohan said, “We are formulating a business model around HITS and would be able to launch it in the next 15-20 days. We will have the first mover advantage over other multi-service operators (MSOs) as we would be the first to start our HITS operations and thus offer digital cable to all our consumers across India,” he added.

The company, which got a HITS licence in 2003, first tried to implement HITS in 2003. However, due to conditional access system (CAS) implementation, HITS took a backseat. In January this year, the information & broadcasting ministry, after receiving regulator Trai’s recommendations, granted existing HITS license holders permission to launch their operations on the basis of the old licence regimes.

WWIL recently set up additional digital head-ends in cities like Lucknow, Bangalore and Pune. The company will be in a position to offer digital cable to all its subscribers with value-added services like video-on-demand, among others. “We would use HITS to expand to states and cities where we do not have a presence like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh,” added Mr Mohan. WWIL, which currently has presence in 43 cities with 4000 franchisees, claims to have a market share of about 25% of the cable & satellite (C&S) homes. The company is also actively acquiring independent cable operators or smaller MSOs. The company had earlier announced plans to invest about Rs 1,000 crore in the next four years for expansion.