The Indian broadcast industry has grown significantly in the last 10 years. The liberalization of the uplinking policy by the Indian government in 1999 has helped the country in developing as a centre for broadcasting. In last 10 years we have seen more and more opportunities opening up in this field with lots of new players coming up with solutions and building up their own teleport. Initially the government allowed the companies to uplink their programs from India using VSNL's and DD's facilities only. Till a few years back building an earth station used to be a huge investment. Lowering of the basic customs duty on broadcast equipment required for earth station by the Indian government has given an impetus to the growth of captive earth stations. The cost for building a single-channel earth station has come down to as low as Rs 2 to 3 cr depending upon the configuration. Now, broadcasters build their own earth stations with large 6 to 9 meters antennae, fully redundant electronics alongwith the backup power system and regulated air conditioning unit rather than using a foreign soil for uplinking thereby paying huge recurring forex. The breakeven for investment has reduced 3 to 4 years for a conventional uplink setup.

While these were happening; the technology advancement especially the digitization of the analog signal has provided much required thrust in the multifold growth of this industry. The introduction of better compression technologies especially MPEG 4
helped many service providers increase the uplink capacity of their uplink station. Today almost all the broadcasters have their own earth stations, albeit different setups depending on the bouquet offered and requirement. These include Sun TV, Eenadu TV, Zee TV, Sahara, MCCS, Aajtak to name a few. At the same time, having a captive earth station translates into:

• Better command and control over the content delivery even at the last minute just prior to uplink due to proximity of the terminal close to the user premise,
• Savings in terms of operating cost, and
• Scope of quick up-gradation to accommodate additional channels as and when required.

There are some major factors for the small time operators to move ahead to start their own channels and build the uplink setup. This growth has been possible because of many factors:

• Industry friendly Indian Government policies;
• Easy availability of local technical expertise;
• Reduction in investment involved;
• Short breakeven time; and
• Development in compression techniques resulting in bandwidth saving.

A typical earth station consist of a terminal which includes an antenna with automatic tracking alongwith encoders for digital compression, modulators, multiplexer, HPAs, signal processing equipment like downconvertors, upconvertors, modems, baseband amplifiers, patch panels, low noise amplifiers, control & supervisory network management system. The optional services can include monitoring software and conditional access system for secured transmission and distribution of the content.

It is equally important to design the earth station which is up-gradable to new formats and compression technologies at any given point of time. This may include the migration from MPEG-2 DVBS to MPEG-4 DVBS2 especially for the DTH service providers which could result in almost 50 percent bandwidth saving on the satellite transponder. As the satellite bandwidth become scarce and expensive and the need for additional channels is always present, this would be a futuristic approach in designing the uplink stations. The uplink facilities are constantly upgrading themselves to include better services and technologies for the end customer. Though at a nascent stage, with time technology will provide better building uplink facilities which will give value added services like movie on demand, video on demand, pay per view, carrying radio channels, broadband internet games etc. These paid services with latest technologies can become potential source for revenue and can also be a differentiator between various service providers who all are actually uplinking more or less the same content/channel. We also need to simultaneously upgrade the set top boxes while significantly cutting down their cost. Most of the paid services common in US and Europe are still to reach the Indian consumer market which is just a matter of time using these uplink facilities.