What has been the growth strategy of Hathway Cable & Datacom?
We are growing both organically and inorganically. Local cable operators keep increasing their connectivity with us and that segment is growing by 5 per cent per annum. We also go out and buy the last-mile cable operator for which we pay 20-24 times his monthly rentals. We have already acquired 100 small multi-system operators (MSOs) and 400 local cable operators. We have about 8 million subscribers now, and 340,000 broadband subscribers. We plan to add about 400,000 last-mile subscribers every year, convert around 900,000 digital boxes, and add 300,000 broadband subscribers. Isn’t that going to be a big challenge? We add around 10,000 broadband subscribers every month; to increase that by another 20,000 per month won’t be that tough. We also convert around 500,000 digital boxes every month. There are some supply constraints in digital boxes, but that’s not much. But to meet our targets, we will have to buy out at least two small local cable operators a day and add about 1,000 subscrib
