Digitalisation is the future: Prasar Bharati CEO

Terming digitalisation as the future in television viewing, Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar Tuesday said it would also help content providers understand which programme is a hit among the masses.

"The entire world has embraced digitalisation. In India we earlier had 100 million Internet users but it has now increased. We are expecting about 300 million internet users. At the same time, there are around 900 million mobile users, and most of them are shifting to 2G and 3G, which means they are accessing Internet through mobiles," Sircar said.

Sircar explained that there would be a large audience for content, even if only 200 million out of approximately 900 million mobile users accessed the Internet. Thus there would be a big need for providing content.

"Right now everybody is trying to enter this highway. Digitalisation is the future. There is no second opinion about it. But what will be the way to enter this segment is the question," Sircar told reporters here.

He said more people would shift to watching television programmes on mobiles and tablets.

"In this process of digitalisation, I personally feel that the urban audience will move towards tablets and the rural audience will move towards the mobile phone. The digital revolution is coming but what will be the mode of networking and penetration is still not clear," he added.