Cable operator associations from across the nation held a meeting with Information and Broadcasting Ministry on 17th July; the meeting was called by the Ministry as it has been receiving many complaints from operators on various issues plaguing the industry.
The issues raised in the meeting have existed since the beginning of Digitalisation but MIB never gave independent and unbiased hearing to the largest stakeholders of the industry. These issues included anomalies in Regulations made by TRAI on 30.04.2012 and 14.05.2012 on Tariff Order, Interconnect Agreements, and Quality of Service & Consumer awareness.
Operators who attended the meeting included Roop Sharma, President Cable Operator Federation of India (COFI), A S Kohli, President West Delhi Cable Operators Association, SPK Goguldoss, State President-Tamil Nadu Cable TV Services Provider’s Association, Ajit Singh Baveja and Iqbal Khan from Malwa Cable Operators Union, Indore, Hassan Anwar, President COA, Cochin (Kerala).
Mrs Supriya Sahu, Jt Secy (Broadcasting), Yogendra Pal, Advisor from the Ministry and Mr N Parameswaran, Principal Advisor (B & CS) from TRAI were the officials who heard the complaints.
According to cable operators MSOs have been given undue powers by the regulations to control the business of LCOs. This is increasingly creating problems for the LCOs making their business difficult. Also an unreasonable revenue share is forcing them to exit the industry. LCOs always fear hostile takeovers by the MSOs causing los of business and generating unemployment.
Major issues raised are given below:-
- Transparency and delay in getting license. Licensing process is too long and for the new MSO registrants, time given to procure, establish and test the headend and SMS and prove the systems for commercial use is too short.
- Quality, Standard, Availability, Service and Interoperability of STBs.
- Customers suffer due to problems created by Poor quality STBs, no proper exchange policy, No immediate Repair/ Replacement.
- Non maintenance of Signal quality by Broadcasters & MSOs. There are no QoS for broadcasters.
- LCO revenue collection from subscribers is shared but LCOs have not been given any share in carriage fee collected by MSO from broadcasters and in running their own, more than 20 video channels that use LCO networks to reach subscribers. Share of advertisement revenue earned from local channels and income from platform services is also not shared.
- Broadcasters have not spent a single Penny in implementation of Digitalisation but all regulations are in their favour. They are revising connectivity of cable networks to demand more revenue and TRAI has allowed them to further increase their price by 27.5% putting more burden on consumers who blame LCOs for this increase.
- TASK Force formation of Phase-II was biased towards Distributors/JV partners of MSOs who were made its members. Minutes of Task force meetings were never put up on Ministry website. There is no Transparency in implementation.
- Right of way in different states has not yet been provided.
- MSOs, their distributors and JV Partners are also distributors of pay channels which is against the Supreme Court Judgement in the case of Star TV Vs Sea TV in 2007. TRAI is not taking any action against them.
- 27.5% price hike by TRAI in ‘Pay’ channel price in Non CAS Areas which will become a DAS Area in Jan 2015, just after 5 months is difficult to implement as subscribers are already paying many times more subscription in DAS areas. TRAI has done this to please broadcasters.
- LCOs/MSOs independently sell a product which is ‘Digital Signal’ of TV channels that is often disrupted by Broadcasters arbritarily and resumed only after a legal battle in TDSAT, causing irrecoverable damage to their business.
- Broadcasters through their MSOs and DTH Players have created vertical and horizontal Monopolies. There is no Broadcast Regulation (Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill is still pending to be passed) or DTH Act to control them. Only Cable Operators are regulated through Cable TV Act.
- MSOs are doing 3 types of Billing in Punjab because of Monopoly of one MSO and because of political protection the MSO is trying to usurp the business of LMOs.
- All Memo/ Letters/ complaints sent by LMO/LCO Associations are not taken seriously by the Ministry and no action is taken on them.
- Consumer awareness was not created informing them of their rights in DAS regime. Instead, only warnings and threats were given. Government did not produce such awareness programmes of its own to genuinely make people aware and smoothly adopt the new technology.
Operators also apprised the Ministry and TRAI that litigations in TDSAT and state High Courts are on the increase due to unfair, biased regulations. They have to resort to costly litigations to save their livelihood because neither the Ministry nor TRAI takes responsibility of implementing the Digitisation in its true spirit and instead blame only the Law passed by the Parliament. They forget that the law was made on the recommendations of TRAI and drafted by the Ministry.
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/digitization-news/item/5552-cable-operators-meet-mib-officials-discuss-hurdles-in-digitisation.html
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