Hathway Cable & Datacom Ltd, formerly BITV Cable Networks, is an Indian

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

service operator based in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

. It was the first company to provide Internet using the CATV network in India, and the first cable operator to launch a digital platform in 2006. Hathway Broadband Internet was the first cable

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

in India. Business India Television (BITV) Cable Networks Pvt Ltd was acquired by Hathway in 1999. As of 2007, the company had a 51% stake in Bhupendran Bhaskar Multinet and 50% stake in Gujarat Telelinks Pvt Ltd (GTPL). In 2011, Hathway GTPL entered in Assam with a MoM with V&S Cable Pvt Ltd, and started operations in West Bengal as they acquired KCBPL (Kolkata Cable & Broadband Pariseva Ltd) to create a subsidiary, GTPLKCBPL, responsible for providing services in

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

Other services

In the second half of 2011, Hathway launched its HDTV services in

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern Indi ...

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Indore Indore () is the largest and most populous city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of both Indore District and Indore Division. It is also considered as an education hub of the state and is the only city to ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

; in

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

in 2013, and in

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...

in 2015. Their new ''HD DVR''

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

initially provided 8 HD channels, with availability increasing to sixteen in March 2012. There are thirty channels available as of 2020. With this addition, Hathway is now the provider with the most HD channels in its Indian market. Hathway Broadband Internet was one of the earliest cable ISP services in the Indian cities of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, Mumbai, Indore,

Bhopal Bhopal (; ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of both Bhopal district and Bhopal division. It is known as the ''City of Lakes'' due to its various natural and artificial lakes. It i ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divis ...

and

. As of 2013, the highest possible speed provided is 50Mbit/s. It uses

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

's Docsis 3 technology in three cities, where the speeds exceed 50 Mbit/s. There are around 11 million subscribers, of which around 1.77 million currently have wireless/broadband internet available. Approximately 430,000 of these users are using Hathway broadband services. Hathway was the first Indian digital cable service provider to release

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to ...

(DVR) services, on March 12, 2009, powered by NDS XTV.

Acquisition by Reliance Industries

Hathway was the

multi-service operator A multiple-system operator (MSO) is an operator of multiple cable or direct-broadcast satellite television systems. A cable system in the United States, by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) definition, is a facility serving a single commun ...

owned by the Rajan Raheja Group. In 2003, it stood as one of the largest multi-system operators in India alongside the

Hinduja Group Hinduja Group is an Indian transnational conglomerate. The group is present in eleven sectors including automotive, oil and specialty chemicals, banking and finance, IT and ITeS, cyber security, healthcare, trading, infrastructure project ...

companies of RPG Cable and InCablenet, and the

Essel Group Essel Group, (also known as Zee Group) is an Indian multinational conglomerate holding company and corporate promoter headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The company has had business interests in mass media, infrastructure and packag ...

controlled

Siti Cable Siti Networks Ltd, formerly known as ''Wire and Wireless (India) Limited (WWIL)'', is a multi system operator (MSO) promoted by the Essel Group (now just 6.1% minority stake holder). The company provides digital cable television services in I ...

, and also one of the three major cable distributors in India alongside DEN Networks and InCablenet. On October 17, 2018,

Reliance Industries Reliance Industries Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate company, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. Relian ...

announced that it had acquired a 51.34% stake in Hathway for . The acquisition received approval from the

Competition Commission of India The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is the chief national competition regulator in India. It is a statutory body within the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and is responsible for enforcing the Competition Act, 2002 to promote competition ...

in January 2019. Reliance acquired an additional 20.61% stake in Hathway through an open offer worth in March 2019, taking its total stake in the company to 71.95%.

References

External links

* {{Nifty 200 companies Companies based in Mumbai Mass media in Mumbai Cable television companies of India Reliance Media Year of establishment missing Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange