The media and entertainment sector of India, which is also one of the fastest growing sectors, is rapidly evolving every year, said Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Minister of Information and Broadcasting at Techade D2M for Bharat Summit in New Delhi. “It is expected to reach Rs 2.8 lakh crore in valuation by 2025.”

Within this M&E segment, TV is the largest sector. Many may say TV is dead but the statistics show otherwise. Chandra said, “TV growth is 12 percent per year and within that, Doordarshan, Prasar Bharti and Free Dish have been growing the fastest. There are about 480 million households in the country out of which only about 190 million households have TV and about eight to nine crore have no TV even today.”At the same time, the number of smartphones in our country is about 80 crore and is expected to rise to 100 crore. This means almost everyone will have a smartphone; hence, Direct-To-Mobile provides an opportunity for the broadcasting sector to reach almost everyone.

If this happens, it will give a tremendous boost to the consumption of data, and content because one can imagine the content is consumed across 19 crore TV households and when it goes to about 80 crore mobile phones, then the content consumption will increase many folds, according to the minister.

The figures that Chandra had, showed that mobile data traffic which was 14.4 hexabytes per month, is expected to go to 43.7 hexabytes by 2024. Out of that, 69 percent of the traffic is video which is a very high number. If this number can be offloaded to D2M, even if a part of it goes to mobiles directly via live content, sports, news and more, that will reduce a tremendous amount of load on our 4G and 5G networks.

In fact, the MIB Secretary has observed that the cities still have better speed of data, but in rural areas, the speeds now are not able to support video content. “This technology, if executed successfully, will lead to evolution in consumption of content.”

The most important thing about D2M is that a mobile user can do it without the internet or a sim card, shared Chandra. “Today, it may seem unimaginable but it will replicate the terrestrial broadcasting of earlier times when an antenna helped the TV receive broadcast.”

Chandra said, “Prasar Bharti today also has offices dedicated to digital terrestrial broadcasting in about 19 cities. Digital terrestrial broadcasting hasn't taken off even though Prasar Bharti has been trying for the past six to seven years because now people are switching over to cable networks, DTH and other content limitations.”

The technology will enable affordable access to educational and entertainment content, and emergency alerts, and will offer the advantage of broadcast offload, as per the minister.

But this technology requires a chip to be enabled, an antenna in the mobile or to be connected to a wifi network which can be done at a rural level. It will all depend on the spectrum available in that local area.

“We at MIB have also come up with the broadcasting bill in 2023 in which we are trying to converge various forms of media. Within that, D2M will have its own space because the bill also provides for future technologies when they come and since D2M is at the cusp of adoption, we can very well put that in consideration for the bill,” Chandra said.

This technology will also help in audience measurement and make it much easier. The ministry was thinking along with BARC to have a reverse path from the household itself. D2M will help them understand much more easily what is being consumed.

From the consumer perspective, the advantage of D2M is the high-speed broadcast without depending on a sim card or internet connection, no buffering and customised content delivery, Chandra highlighted.

“Currently, the spectrum in which digital terrestrial broadcasting is given is 470-582 Mhz. it was decided in 2021, out of this frequency 526-582 Mhz will be coordinated and shared with broadcasting services and 5G IMT services. Subsequently, 56 Mhz out of 470-526 Mhz will be sufficient for D2M technology,” revealed the minister.

Further Chandra thinks, of course, there will be policy issues as to what will be the public broadcast component, what will be the other channels which will carry revenue models but…“India can be a pioneer in this technology as India is the only country where D2M technology is being worked upon and is at a stage where it's almost ready for adoption,” he concluded.