The Great Betrayal

The present amendment to the Cable TV Act and subsequent regulations drafted to satisfy the hidden agenda in the DAS Law has lead to the present stalemate in implementing Digitalisation in the country. This will be one of the major factor for its failure as these regulations have been drafted with lot of assumptions grossly neglecting the ground realities. 

Recent extension of deadline for the first phase of digitalization pertaining to the four metros coming just 10 days before the deadline of 01 July itself is an indication that something has drastically gone wrong; Perhaps, people at the helms of affairs did not do their home work properly and took the ground realities seriously. Achieving just 25% of STB penetration instead of 100% expected by 30 June is a shame for the planners who have, for some reasons played with the hopes of the industry. This means that the deadlines and the inputs for the process were not commensurate with the realities. 

July 2012

2/7/12 -- Two petitions were filed in TDSAT, one by DigiCable and the other by a group of independent MSOs of Delhi including Delhi Distribution Company(DDC), Home Cable and other MSO(I) against TRAI’s tariff order.

Ist Phase Deadlines Extended

As expected the Ministry has extended the first phase deadlines to 30 October 2012. It has given six months from 30th April 2012, the day the Cable TV Rules were notified as required by the DAS Amendment Act 2011. In fact, this was one of the demands of the independent MSOs who wanted to start their own business rather than become distributor of a large MSO. Given the opportunity and the time most of the large cable operators who have become independent MSOs in the big cities would like to go this way unless the government, in connivance with the broadcasters, make life difficult for them to enable their own digital headends. 

The first shock TRAI and the Ministry has received in the process is in the form of carriage fee demands by the MSOs averaging to ` 2.00 per subscriber per month as against TRAI chairman JS Sarma’s estimate of ` 50- ` 1 per subscriber per year. How wrong was he to have said that Digitalisation would end carriage fee woes for broadcasters?