Hathway


Hathway Cable & Datacom Ltd, initially known as BITV Cable Networks is an Indian cable television service operator in based in Mumbai. It was acquired by Hathway Investments Pvt Ltd in 1999. In June 1993 Business India Television Cable Networks Pvt Ltd acquired and operated cable networks in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Indore, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad under the leadership of Pheroza Billimoria and Roopesh Rao. It has large operations in many cities, including Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Indore and in Kolkata. It has diversified into providing Internet access via cable and was one of the first to do so in Chennai in 1999–2000. In India, it was the first company to provide Internet using the CATV network. Hathway Broadband Internet was the first cable ISP in India.
The company has a 51 percent stake in Bhupendran Bhasker Multinet and 50% stake in Gujarat Telelinks Pvt Ltd in 2007. This gives it a strong position in Gujarat CATV. In 2006, Hathway was the first cable operator to launch a digital platform in India. In 2011 Hathway GTPL enters in Assam with MoM with V&S Cable Pvt Ltd, and started operations in West Bengal as they acquired KCBPL to create subsidiary - GTPLKCBPL. GTPLKCBPL is taking care of services provided in West Bengal .

Other services

In the second half of 2011, Hathway launched its HD services in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Indore, Kolkata in 2013, Gujarat, and Odisha in 2015. The new HD DVR set-top box initially provided eight HD channels, but this has been increased to 18 from the first week of March 2012 and subsequently increased to 30. With this addition, Hathway HD is now the provider with most HD channels in its bouquet in India. HD channels provided are Star Movies, Movies Now, Zee Studio, Zee Cinema, Ten HD, Star Plus, Colors HD, Star World, CNBC, NGC, Discovery, Travel XP, M Tunes HD, UTV Stars, Star Gold, History Channel, Zee TV and Nat Geo Wild.
Hathway Broadband Internet was one of the earliest cable ISP services in Indian cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow and Kolkata. As of 2013, The maximum speed provided is up to 50 Mbit/s. It uses Cisco Systems's Docsis 3 technology in three cities, where the speeds are 50 Mbit/s.
It has around 11 million subscribers, out of which around 1.77 million have the availability of broadband. Out of this, about 430,000 subscribers are using Hathway's broadband services.
Hathway is set to release its digital video recorder service soon, powered by NDS XTV.

Acquisition by Reliance Industries

On 17 October 2018, Reliance Industries announced that it had acquired a 51.34% stake in Hathway for. The shares would be held through multiple Reliance subsidiaries including Jio Futuristic Digital Holdings Private Limited, Jio Digital Distribution Holdings Private Limited, Jio Television Distribution Holdings Private Limited, Reliance Industries Limited Digital Media Distribution Trust, Reliance Content Distribution Limited and Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings Limited. 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%.