Vas By Cable Operators

Indian Cable TV industry is going through a metamorphosis. And this is quite evident as enough hype is being generated about CAS, DTH, Digitization and to top it all VAS. 

While picking up VAS (Value Added Services) as a subject of business opportunity, attention should hover around two basic elements.

CAS Gets The Nod

Like the month of June, July also kept us busy in hectic activities in the Industry. First of all, it was the open house discussions of TRAI on numerous consultation papers issued in June, then there were the two major Court Cases, one between the MSOs and the Ministry of I&B that decided the implementation of CAS with immediate effect and the second between Dish-TV and Star TV where TDSAT gave a landmark ruling of sharing of content between the two DTH platforms, cost of the content package to be 50% of the cost on cable and the third major happening was the release of Draft Broadcast Bill that created a commotion amongst the Broadcasters with its proposals of cross-media restrictions, mandatory time slot for social programming, public service advertising and mandatory percentage of content sourced from India by all foreign channels and restriction on market share of broadcasters as well as MSOs.

After the Delhi High Court’s strict order to implement CAS by 31 Dec 2006, I don’t think there is any way now for the government to avoid this. TRAI is already busy in drafting regulations for the CAS areas. Government has already issued the Notification on CAS with a number of changes in the Cable Television Act. Lets hope this time that CAS gets implemented and the Cable Industry gets a level playing field with DTH.

CAS Gets The Nod

Like the month of June, July also kept us busy in hectic activities in the Industry. First of all, it was the open house discussions of TRAI on numerous consultation papers issued in June, then there were the two major Court Cases, one between the MSOs and the Ministry of I&B that decided the implementation of CAS with immediate effect and the second between Dish-TV and Star TV where TDSAT gave a landmark ruling of sharing of content between the two DTH platforms, cost of the content package to be 50% of the cost on cable and the third major happening was the release of Draft Broadcast Bill that created a commotion amongst the Broadcasters with its proposals of cross-media restrictions, mandatory time slot for social programming, public service advertising and mandatory percentage of content sourced from India by all foreign channels and restriction on market share of broadcasters as well as MSOs.

August 2006

Tuesday, August 01, 2006 -- The Central Government empowered TRAI to fix the prices of pay channels, if they are too high. It also ordered to cut-down the time Span of advertisements to 12 minutes.

Government Serious About Digital

It’s the time to speculate. TRAI, The regulator is in a mood to regulate and we all wait for what is there in store for each one of us. The regulation they are touching upon, once finalized may change the whole media scene. Consultation papers were issued last month on subjects like “Whether IP TV should be permitted on cable networks”, “MDU to be part of DTH”, “Interconnect Issues”, “Proposed Interconnect Agreement between Broadcaster, MSOs and Franchisees”, “Quality of Services Norms in CAS”, etc. I am sure the stakeholders must be fed up with replying to all these consultation papers but they are all so important that I feel, TRAI should have thought of releasing them with more spacing as it is impossible to do justice to these regulations in a short period of few days. Number of stakeholders I talked to, didn’t even know if there were attempts to regulate them.

In the above context, I will like to blame the cable operators for not adequately responding to such consultation papers when they affect them the most. There are hardly any comments from them except Cable Operators Federation who are very regular in reacting to the regulatory measure affecting the Industry.

Government Serious About Digital

It’s the time to speculate. TRAI, The regulator is in a mood to regulate and we all wait for what is there in store for each one of us. The regulation they are touching upon, once finalized may change the whole media scene. Consultation papers were issued last month on subjects like “Whether IP TV should be permitted on cable networks”, “MDU to be part of DTH”, “Interconnect Issues”, “Proposed Interconnect Agreement between Broadcaster, MSOs and Franchisees”, “Quality of Services Norms in CAS”, etc. I am sure the stakeholders must be fed up with replying to all these consultation papers but they are all so important that I feel, TRAI should have thought of releasing them with more spacing as it is impossible to do justice to these regulations in a short period of few days. Number of stakeholders I talked to, didn’t even know if there were attempts to regulate them.

July 2006

Sunday, July 02, 2006 -- The goverment said, the reports alleging that it planned to muzzle the media through the proposed Broadcasting Bill, were not factually correct. “ UPA government would never do anything to encroach upon the fundamental rights of the media”, said I&B Minister P.R. Dasmunsi.