Broadcasting at a crossroads: Regulation, cord-cutting, and FAST TV battle

Two distinct but deeply connected battles are reshaping India’s television industry this week: one fought in regulatory submissions to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the other playing out quietly in subscriber data showing pay TV’s structural erosion accelerating.

The FAST TV fault line
TRAI’s ongoing consultation on Application-based Linear Television Distribution services, which covers Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television, or FAST, channels delivered over the internet, has crystallised into a sharp confrontation between India’s licensed broadcast establishment and the digital platforms that have been building parallel television ecosystems largely outside the regulatory perimeter.

Traditional pay TV operators are pressing their case forcefully. Tata Play and Dish TV have urged TRAI to bring FAST channels and app-based linear services under the same regulatory framework that governs DTH and cable distribution, covering licensing, tariff rules, programme codes, and advertising compliance. Their argument is one of competitive equity: licensed operators have built businesses under considerable regulatory obligation while internet-distributed linear channels have scaled without equivalent accountability. The All India Digital Cable Federation has echoed this position, contending that FAST platforms have exploited a regulatory gap to build advertising businesses that now compete directly with licensed television distribution.

On the other side, JioStar has warned that applying broadcast-era frameworks to internet-based services, imposing licensing fees, mandatory carriage obligations, or pricing controls, would suppress innovation, increase compliance costs, and discourage investment in India’s connected-TV ecosystem, which is expanding rapidly. The broader digital industry argument is that FAST services operate over the internet, not over scarce licensed spectrum or cable infrastructure, and that subjecting them to television-era rules would be a category error with damaging consequences.

Smart TV manufacturers have entered the debate from a different angle. LG and the industry body MAIT have petitioned TRAI to exclude TV manufacturers and operating system providers from any future regulatory framework entirely. Their position is that device makers provide hardware and software infrastructure and bear no responsibility for content distribution, channel curation, or monetisation, all of which sit with application providers. Some smart-TV-linked FAST services already carry more than 150 linear channels preloaded across connected televisions, smartphones, tablets, and web platforms, which is precisely why the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting flagged the sector as operating without any licensing or registration framework.

The regulatory outcome will have significant commercial consequences. FAST channels are growing into a meaningful advertising vehicle, and the question of whether their ad revenue is subject to the same obligations as licensed broadcast advertising is not merely procedural, it determines the economics of an emerging market that traditional broadcasters and digital platforms both want to dominate.

The subscriber haemorrhage
Running beneath the regulatory noise is a deterioration in pay TV’s subscriber base that has moved from gradual to acute. Active pay DTH subscribers fell from 52.78 million in September 2025 to 50.99 million by December 2025, a decline of nearly two million in a single quarter. The longer arc is more severe: between 2018 and 2024, India lost approximately 40 million pay-TV households, a contraction that has had measurable employment consequences across the local cable operator ecosystem, with job losses estimated at 114,000 to 195,000 nationwide.

The pattern of decline is uneven but directionally consistent. Tier 1 cities are seeing the steepest drops as higher-income households migrate to connected TV and OTT subscriptions. Smaller towns and rural markets are being absorbed by DD Free Dish, the government-run free DTH service, whose subscriber base has grown from 33 million in 2017 to 49 million in 2024 and is projected to reach 57 million by 2030. Free TV is not a solution that the pay DTH industry welcomes; it represents revenue that has permanently left the paid ecosystem.

The total television household count in India continues to grow, projected to reach 214 million by 2026, which creates a surface impression of a healthy market. The underlying shift is more disruptive: the pie is expanding, but the pay TV slice is shrinking, as connected TV and free streaming capture the incremental growth. Platform economics that once favoured the cable and DTH distribution chain are being redrawn in real time.

Satellite access opens up
Against this turbulent domestic backdrop, India’s satellite broadcast infrastructure received a notable expansion. Intelsat secured authorisation from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre to provide direct broadcast satellite services in India, among the first foreign satellite operators to receive such approval. Four geostationary satellites providing C-band coverage, IS-17, IS-20, IS-36, and IS-39, have been cleared to serve India’s broadcast media industry, enabling enhanced content delivery and distribution across the subcontinent. Intelsat has already signed business with three of India’s largest media companies following the approval. The development is relevant for broadcasters who depend on satellite for distribution reach into markets where terrestrial broadband connectivity remains inconsistent.

The week’s developments collectively illustrate the tension at the heart of India’s television industry: an incumbent structure built on licensed distribution, satellite infrastructure, and pay subscriptions is being challenged by internet-native platforms operating with lighter regulatory obligations and stronger growth momentum. How TRAI resolves the FAST TV question will partly determine how that tension is managed, or whether it intensifies further.
BCS Bureau