DTH Service in Cars is nothing but ?Direct to Hell?

Deepak Kumar Mohanty

New Delhi

Tue, 31 Jul 2007: 

July 31: Just a couple of days back I heard the news from one of my friend that Zee Group’s “direct to home” service or DTH is going to pvide DishTV service for cars and trains.

It seems a good idea as far as train is concerned keeping in mind passengers’ comfort but as far as its service provided to cars is concerned then it is certainly going to raise the toll of road-accidents which is already high in india.

Apart from DTH’s success in bringing more than hundreds of channels to the viewer’s home, it has also been successful in various aircrafts including Kingfisher Airlines. But as per the company’s expansion strategy, it should be confined to only those transport systems where driver has nothing to do with TV sets installed in the vehicle and his attention is not diverted from the driving.

As a customer of Dish TV service I can tell that the company first needs to improve its standard of service. Many times people complain about the set top box, antenna problem, quality of signals and customer care. The company needs to take measures to improve its quality of service first rather than announcing any new venture.

Take the instance of a car with DTH TV service, though the television set is installed in rear seat of the car but it can certainly distract driver in many instances with the behaviour of back seat passengers. Passengers’ safety primarily depends on driver’s concentration and if it some how breaks then it can culminate into dire consequences.

In this sense one can easily come to the conclusion that it is not a good deal in case of cars. However, to avoid boredom in journey in trains and aircrafts it can certainly open a new chapter of entertainment with value of time. Though the new addition can increase the fare of travel in trains, luxury buses and aircrafts.

Again for this service customer will have to pay much higher prices than they are paying for their home DTH service. As the plan needs high quality auto tracking antenna and other equipments it is not clear whether it can actually able to lure the customer with increased prices.

In the end we can say that in India where the quality of roads and the traffic sense of the people are so poor that makes accidents inevitable, the new service will not make any difference other than increasing number of accidents. Therefore service provider should come up some more logical ideas keeping in mind the security and safety of the public.