MUMBAI: Hinduja Group’s new Headend in the Sky (HITS) platform NXT Digital will be using Hansen’s ICC billing solution.

The Hinduja Group has signed a multi-year licence agreement for Hansen’s ICC Customer Care and Billing.

“With a potential target market of more than 100 million subscribers, we needed the leverage of a globally recognised firm with the expertise to move us forward. The implementation of our HITS platform will allow local cable operators to provide high-quality digital TV services to customers within their specific regions,” said Grant Investrade managing director Tony D’silva.

India is currently going through a government-mandated digitisation programme and it is expected that over 110 million TV homes will make the transition from analogue to digital over the next 17 months.

Hansen ICC has the strength and flexibility to support HITS by giving control to the parent organisation while allowing the individual businesses to operate independently.

“Businesses that run distributed models like HITS require the flexibility to balance the needs of the overall organisation with each of the independent operating units. The HITS business hierarchy requirements are highly complex; our Pay-TV solution enables NXT Digital to provide multi system operators (MSOs) and last mile owners (LMOs) a scalable solution from a single deployment,” added Hansen Technologies CEO Andrew Hansen. 

The company was selected by GIL after a rigorous four-stage evaluation process conducted by Castle Media, which is also the technology programme manager for the HITS service, responsible for design to delivery of the $100 million project.

“Hansen exhibited the functionality and features that are required for an extremely complex multi-tier operation. With its pedigree and experience in the global Pay-TV space, it is certainly the appropriate partner for such a high-value project,” said Castle Media executive director Vynsley Fernandes.