Hopes are being betrayed

All estimates of TRAI and Ministry regarding digitalisation are going haywire. First the deadline for the Phase I was shifted from 30 June to 31 October 2012. Then the timeline for signing `RIO agreements between broadcasters and the MSOs was shifted to 21 August. Nothing much has happened till now when the deadline is just 60 days away. Only Mumbai has achieved 50% of STB penetration. Other metros are just around 30%. This way it will be difficult to achieve the deadline of October 31st too. Moreover, not signing the RIOs is hampering further progress and TRAI is threatening to cancel the licenses of the MSOs who have not been able to sign them till now. 

One thing I can't understand, why is the Ministry not realising that the policy of compulsory digitalisation of cable TV is not the need of the day in India. Present delays are at the Broadcaster, MSO and LCO level only. Consumers are yet to face the heat of compulsory digitalisation. What if millions of people reject buying an STB even after the deadline? Will the government order their disconnection? How will the government get expected Tax revenue if there are no consumers? It is definitely a precarious situation. 

Why DTH Feels Insecure?

The Day I&B Ministry released their first ad promoting mandatory digitalisation of Cable TV industry, there was an ad of the same size of half page by a DTH operator trashing the cable STB as a 'Dabba”. 

Another DTH company states in their full page ad in newspapers that 'cable will seize to exist 'from 01 July. 

August 2012

1/8/12 -- 14th meeting of the Task Force was held in New Delhi. The meeting was chaired by the Addl. Secretary (I&B).

DTH Operators Demoralised

While digitalisation of Cable TV in the metros has been deferred by the government ,worst hit are the DTH operators who wanted to cash in on failure of the fragmented cable industry in fully complying with the stringent government regulations, particularly in the initial stages of the process when even the subscribers are not well prepared . Although DTH already being a fully digital service is well entrenched since eight years, it has no reasons to feel insecure but the conditions under which it is operating makes it a struggling service, mainly because it has to compete with many small players running analog cable networks with very low ARPU. 

We dedicate this issue to DTH service in India, speaking to many experts in the field to know the present and the future of the service and also analyse the service with our own inputs. 

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?