With Zone Reality due to cease Asia Pacific transmissions with effect from June 30 ,It is time for Dialog to replace the channel at no extra cost.

As of late all the new channels introduced have carried a charge of Rs 50/= but since Zone Reality is being taken off the new one must be provided FOC. Hopefully the Dialog TV management will act positively regarding this development and the replacement should be a quality English channel and not some Hindi/Tamil/Local Pay Television channel.

According to a report in todays "Daily Mirror" Dialog TV requires 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers in 3 to 4 years in order to break even (see Daily Mirror May 30th - Dialog TV aims high). This is actually not too difficult if the packages are actually customer centric and if the channels are of consistent quality.

To achieve this target the package/set plan rates will have to be reduced and the broadcast quality will have to increase greatly. With reductions in Set Plan/Package rates they may need to more subscribers to break even but they will be able to achieve the target, if no overhaul is carried out then Dialog will fail. Anyway the introduction of MPEG4 has been confirmed by the CEO which means that the roll out should take place sometime this year. Dialog is also planning to get into HDTV (see Daily News May 30th - Dialog TV to break even in four years).

Still issues like HBO channels pixelation continues, bandwidth to the religious channels has been reduced. Dialog is trying to increase quality by removing quality from other channels and have failed miserably in their attempt. Hopefully the CEO addresses these problems soon.