Doordarshan’s free-to-air (FTA) direct to home (DTH) service Freedish is planning to acquire Bangalore based ByDesign India’s conditional access system (CAS) so as to increase its channel offerings to 112 from the current 64 by the end of March 2016.

The ByDesign model is totally indigenous and built for DVB-C setup. This CAS solution will enable broadcasters to control access to their services by viewers, and thereby enabling them to extend their business models to subscription based schemes.

This will mean that the Freedish will become encrypted but will remain FTA. In addition to helping increase the number of channels on the platform, this will enable Freedish to gauge the exact number of households relying on Freedish as encrypted set top boxes (STBs) will only be available with authorised dealers.

Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar had said earlier this year that Freedish’s aim was to reach 112 channels within a year or so.

At present, there is no vacant slot on Freedish since all channels that were on the platform and whose licences had expired have come back through the 24 e-auctions conducted over the past year.

Interestingly, the two new entrants on the platform – Aaj Tak and Big Magic – are pay channels, which are being run as FTA on Freedish. DD sources said that the reference interconnect agreement signed by these two channels no longer carries any non-discriminatory clause as it refers to Freedish.

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