TRAI directs cable TV industry to go digital

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a move to make India equal with some developed countries in terms of television broadcasting system has asked the government to impose the rules of transforming all analogue television network into digital mode and set the time frame of five-year for this.

This move of TRAI will make Local Cable Operators (LCO) strong enough to compete the emerging digital TV technologies like Direct-to-Home (DTH), Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and Headend In The Sky (HITS). Moreover, the quality and service of the cable broadcast will also be improved.

TRAI in this regard has sent its final recommendation to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to approve it. If this recommendation is approved in its suggested form, the structure of entire cable industry would be revamped and greater emphasis of this recommendation will enhance addressability and encourage voluntary Conditional Access System.

TRAI is also eyeing to exploit the opportunity of its potential growth, which has reached on 78-millions homes since 2007, and still have lots of chances to grow. ‘Since last two decades, the cable TV industry has gained fabulous growth due to higher entrepreneurial skills of Cable TV operators’, as per TRAI but due to some limitations in the analogue mode, it cannot grow fiercely.

“The present mode of Cable TV transmission which is predominantly analogue, has certain limitations as it lacks scope for technological up-gradation, appropriate addressability and efficient resource utilisation,” TRAI said in a released statement.

Pointing out the crucial factors behind major obstacles in way of full exploitation of cable industry TRAI said, “The non-availability of authenticated data, lack of supervisory guidance, poor quality of service, inadequate consumer grievance redressal mechanism and unorganised development of Cable TV industry are some of the roadblocks to explore its full potential.”

Thus, ‘authority has recommended a well defined, robust and supportive licensing framework to restructure the Cable TV sector in order to boost planned, sustained growth and better services to customers.’

The regulator has also added the Multi System Operators (MSO) first time in its regulation and also asked them to do the same in the same time limit while for the new players; TRAI has set a time limit of three years.

TRAI has also specified an entry fee of Rs 10,000 and Rs 1 lakh for cable TV licenses for districts and states, respectively while for MSOs, the entry fee would be Rs. 1 Lakh, Rs. 10 Lakhs and Rs. 25 lakhs for District, State and Country level respectively.

All cable TV operators in India will have to take the license and also have to establish a complaint redressal system to sort out of all complaints. Moreover, the cable operators will have to provide the detail bills mentioning subscription charges, service tax, entertainment tax and other charges to the customers. It would also be mandatory for the cable operators to submit a copy of records to the government from time to time as per specified period in the recommendation guideline.

TRAI has also stated in its recommendation about making the cable operators eligible for seeking out Right of Way (ROW) that defines the cable operators would be eligible to seek out the most appropriate way of laying fiber underground as well as over poles on non exclusive basis for cable network expansion.

There are at least 30,000 registered cable operators in India and the numbers of unregistered cable operators are same. With the association of nearby 6,000 MSOs the growing cable industry have worth presently at Rs.23,000-crore which serves the 78-million TV homes.

Hathway, Wire and Wireless India (WWIL is owned by the Zee Group) and the Hinduja Group’s Incable are the major MSOs in the country while Tata Sky, Dish TV and DD Direct+ are major DTH players in India.