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Government gives green signal to DTH

The Union Cabinet on Thursday gave its nod for allowing direct-to-home television services, which would revolutionise broadcasting in the country.

The decision came three days after an eight-member group of ministers headed by Home Minister L K Advani prepared a unanimous report favouring DTH, official sources said.

The Ku-Band DTH service offers greater and direct connectivity to the viewer providing over 100 channels through a small dish antenna doing away with intermediaries like cable operators. It has enormous penetration power to cover far-flung and remote areas.

Promising enhanced picture quality, it also has the scope for interactive TV services like movie on demand and possibility of introducing value-added services like Internet access, e-mail, home-shopping, banking and tele-education.

The GoM was formed nearly two years ago to go into the controversial DTH issue and place its recommendations to the Union Cabinet when Pramod Mahajan was the Information and Broadcasting Minister.

Besides Advani, others in the group are Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, Defence Minister George Fernandes, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj, Information Technology Minister Mahajan, Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Space Minister Vasundhara Raje and Law Minister Arun Jaitley.

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