Company Overview of Sun Direct TV Private Limited

Sun Direct TV Private Limited and Reliance Digital TV Ltd of Reliance Communications Ltd. are seeking to merge their DTH businesses, sources with direct knowledge said. Sun Direct and Reliance Digital are preliminary talks to merge their businesses into a single entity, sources added. Also, people in the know shared that promoters of Reliance Communications and the Sun Group met to discuss the deal. The deal is still at an initial stage and the valuations are yet to be finalized, but sources suggest that Sun Group is likely to own a majority stake in the merged company while Reliance Communications is likely to own less than 26% in the company. Sun Group has denied any such deal talks and Reliance Communications has declined to comment to ET Now.

Department of Telecomm wants Supreme Court to direct Sun Direct TV Private Limited to pay an annual license fee according to the license agreement. The DoT has challenged the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat)'s directive that had excluded income from non-licenced activities for the purpose of calculating licence fee. Tdsat had said the DTH services operator is required to pay licence fee on the basis of AGR, which should mean total revenue as reflected in the audited accounts from the operation of DTH as reduced by subscription fee charges passed on to the pay channel broadcasters, sale of hardware included integrated receiver decoder required for connectivity at the consumers' premises and service/entertainment tax actually paid to the government if gross revenue had included them. In its petition, DOT wants review of the manner in which the 'gross revenue' is to be calculated for the purpose of the annual licence fee from DTH licensees, including the South-based Sun TV group firm. As the matter relating to adjusted gross revenue is pending before the Apex Court, the DTH operator is required to pay licence fee according to the licence agreement and not according to Tdsat's decision. The DoT said it had exclusive privilege to grant license and was entitled to a share in revenue earned by the licensees.