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 ...
and
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
service provider based in
Mumbai
Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...
. 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 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 a 50% stake in Gujarat Telelinks Pvt Ltd (GTPL). In 2011, Hathway GTPL entered Assam with an 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 language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...
.
Other services
In the second half of 2011, Hathway launched its HDTV services in
Mumbai
Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...
,
Hyderabad
Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...
,
Bangalore
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
,
Chennai
Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...
,
Indore
Indore (; ISO 15919, ISO: , ) is the largest and most populous Cities in India, city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The commercial capital of the state, it has been declared as the List of cleanest cities in India, cleanest city of In ...
,
Kolkata
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...
; in
Gujarat
Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, 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 List of states and union territories ...
in 2013, and
Odisha
Odisha (), formerly Orissa (List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2011), is a States and union territories of India, state located in East India, Eastern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by ar ...
in 2015. Their new ''HD DVR''
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...
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, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...
, Mumbai, Indore,
Bhopal
Bhopal (; ISO 15919, ISO: Bhōpāl, ) is the capital (political), 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 ...
,
Lucknow
Lucknow () is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and the largest city of the List of state and union territory capitals in India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is the administrative headquarters of the epon ...
and
Kolkata
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...
. As of 2024, the highest possible speed provided via fiber is 300 Mbit/s. It uses
Cisco
Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...
's
Docsis
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
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), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SS ...
(DVR) services, on March 12, 2009, powered by
NDS XTV.
Acquisition by Reliance Industries
Hathway was the
multi-service operator 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 Conglomerate (company), 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 proj ...
companies of RPG Cable and InCablenet, and the
Essel Group controlled
Siti Networks,
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 headquartered in Mumbai. Its businesses include energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, entertainment, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. Reliance is the ...
announced that it had acquired a 51.34% stake in Hathway for . The acquisition received approval from the
Competition Commission of India 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
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{{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
Reliance Industries
Internet service providers of India