Satellite fight in Brazil.

It's a familiar story: satellite companies fighting each other for subscribers, cable companies fighting back. It is happening in Brazil too.

Last fall, two DTH satellite services were launched in Brazil. August 1996 saw the Brazilian birth of DirecTV, which comes from majority owner Hughes Electronics and local partner TVA (owned by publisher Grupo Abril). At press time, DirecTV had 60,000 subscribers. The company aims to have 240,000 subscribers by this December.

By October 1996, DirecTV had a competitor: Sky Latin America, owned by Globo (Brazil), TCI (U.S.), Televisa (Mexico) and News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch). Sky Latin America had 9,000 subscribers at press time, and it hopes to have 120,000 by December.

Brazil's cable TV industry, which isn't very old itself, is up in arms. In January NET Brasil, a company partially owned by Globo that oversees seven of the country's cable operators, fought back. It announced plans to invest $150 million in 500,000 digital set-top boxes; so far, this is the largest order anyone has made for this technology. The boxes, which NET Brasil plans to start selling this October at $300 a pop, will allow consumers to receive up to 330 channels instead of the current 80, as well as services like pay-per-view and near-video-on-demand.

It's hard to say whether the increase in channels and services will allow cable to win the battle, or for that matter whether the higher cost of the satellite services will cause Brazilian viewers to stick to cable. As in the U.S., the outcome is far from clear.