Quality of Service Regulations for Cable TV

on 24 Feb, 2009 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued the Standards of Quality of Service (Broadcasting and Cable Services) (Cable Television – Non-CAS Areas) Regulations, 2009. These regulations will empower the consumers for receiving quality service from the cable TV service providers in non-CAS areas. These regulations will take effect from April 1st, 2009, which will give sometime to the service providers to take necessary steps to comply with these regulations. 

There are more than 80 million consumers receiving cable TV services in non-CAS areas, being served by about 60,000 cable operators. No formal regulations for quality of service (QoS) were issued so far in view of the highly fragmented nature of cable TV sector and because of implementational difficulties at ground level. Subsequently, TRAI has issued Quality of Service Regulations for cable services for CAS notified Areas in 2006. The DTH subscribers are also benefited by the Quality of Service Regulations for DTH Services issued by TRAI in 2007.

VALUE ADDED SERVICES

Consumer benefit and competitive rates in the objective of TRAI's recommendations on Value Added Services to the government.

on 13 Feb 09 TRAI released Recommendations on Growth of Value Added Services and Regulatory Issues. The value added service (VAS) market in India has a great potential for growth and the revenue is expected to reach above INR 250 billion by the year 2009-10 and more than 30% of the revenue of the telecom access service providers in the next 5-7 years. 

Simplifying Digital Cable Deployment

How can you simplify digital cable deployment without breaking the bank? Leaving aside the fact that some of our banks seem to be broken already, few would deny that digital cable has been slow to develop in India, as while the market is incredibly dynamic it is also fragmented. This often requires a highly complex planning process when it comes to rollout. “Not only does India have a huge number of cable systems ranging from large MSOs to many local operators, but it also has to face the major obstacle of signal piracy,” says Jeremy Thorp, CEO at Latens, the UK-based software Conditional Access System (CAS) and middleware vendor for digital Pay TV. Then there’s the challenging prospect of competing head-to-head with the nation's new fleet of satellite TV providers with a service that offers better quality of viewing, and most importantly at an attractive price. In addition, the Indian government has recently mandated the adoption of a CAS (Conditional Access System) for cable operators, which many end users and operators believe may considerably raise the cost of pay TV service delivery. With such a downward pressure on finances, it’s not altogether surprising to see the emergence of budget revenue protection systems that seem to be almost too good to be true. But as ever, you get what you pay for, Thorp warns.

The First 3G Technology

The first radiotelephone service was introduced in the US at the end of the 1940s, and was meant to connect mobile users in cars to the public fixed network. In the 1960s, a new system launched by Bell Systems, called Improved Mobile Telephone Service” (IMTS), brought many improvements like direct dialing and higher bandwidth.

March 2009

Wednesday, March 2, 2009 -- TRAI issued guidelines to all service providers providing internet /broadband to ensure better service to their subscriber.