Saturday 24 September 2011

Privatization of DD’s DTH Service

In order to modernize its direct-to-home platform, DD Direct Plus, Doordarshan is planning to lease out its operation and maintenance to a private party.
The act is being taken to make possible the raising of the capacity of the platform from 59 to 200 and beyond in 6-8 months. It is noteworthy that Doordarshan spends around Rs four billion every year to operate 59 channels on DD Direct+ (including 22 DD channels) while private operators deal with over 230 channels on their respective DTH platforms at nearly half the cost (on a per channel basis).

Under the projected arrangement, private operators will manage the entire technical back-end of DD Direct Plus including uplink and downlink of channels, quality control, Subscriber management and expansion.
In order to attract only committed private players, Doordarshan will keep the net worth requirement for bidders at Rs 200 crores, which means only DTH firms like Dish TV, Tata Sky, Digital TV, Sun Direct and others would be able to qualify.
Although, several unions within the Doordarshan have raised their objections on the plan and the Recognized Association’s Forum of Akashwani & Doordarshan (RAFAD) has written a letter to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni stating the move as an "arbitrary and undemocratic decision" of the Nominated Member and Prasar Bharati CEO Rajiv Takru who is Additional Secretary in the Ministry.
The Forum also added that Takru seems to be working with a false motive and his actions will lead to closure of the department.
According to a press release by Recognized Association’s Forum of Akashwani & Doordarshan (RAFAD), the Planning Commission has already approved an amount of additional Rs 1.44 billion to Doordarshan, which is sufficient for the purpose.
However, the report also said that the proposal has not received final clearance from the government.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/dth-news/item/487-privatization-of-dd%E2%80%99s-dth-service.html
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/dth-news/item/487-privatization-of-dd%E2%80%99s-dth-service.html

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