Consumers may have to fork about Rs 15 for general entertainment pay channels, and Rs 45 for sport channels when the Conditional Access System sees limited implementation in the country from mid-November this year.

The system, under which consumers have to buy a set-top box to watch pay channels, will be rolled out in south Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata (CAS has already been implemented in Chennai), representing over 6 million cable households. Customers are expected to spend between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 on a set-top box.

According to the regulations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India laid out so far, consumers will have to pay a basic service charge of Rs 77 for "free-to-air" channels.

For set-top boxes, they have to either pay Rs 30 as monthly rental with a refundable deposit of Rs 999, or rent a box for Rs 45 without any deposit.

At the moment, customers pay Rs 200-250 at an average for a bouquet that contains Sony, Star, Zee and sports channels. However, Trai, which is overseeing the whole process, will finalise the bouquet prices by August 31.

"The prices so fixed would stay frozen for about 12-18 months after the operationalisation of CAS," stated an industry executive.

As per the rollout schedule, registration and obtaining of authorisation for CAS has to be done in September, while publicity campaigns and demand estimates will be taken up in October.

Installations will begin by mid-November, and December will see trial runs all over the notified areas. By January 1, CAS has to be implemented completely in the notified areas.

Multi-system operators -- large cable operators with headends to receive and transmit signals to Last Mile Operators -- and cable operators have already begun gearing up to meet the demand by stocking STBs, and undertaking a massive digitisation exercise.

Two of the biggest MSOs -- Hathway Cable & Datacom and InCableNet -- have spent over Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) to adapt to the new system, while cable operators are estimated to have spent in excess of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).

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