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January 02, 2007 16:37 IST
Broadcast tribunal TDSAT on Tuesday asked regulator TRAI to look into the possibility of fixing prices of TV channels under the DTH (Direct-to-Home) service following a similar arrangement for Conditional Access System.
"For CAS, you have come out with an order of Rs 5 per channel... but for DTH, you do not have any plans like that," TDSAT chairman Justice Arun Kumar said.
In the absence of any firm pricing formula, DTH companies would continue to fight among themselves, he said while hearing a case between DTH platform TataSky and content provider Zee-Turner.
"Now, we have to take a larger perspective. Ultimately, customers are suffering," he said and asked TRAI to file a reply within two weeks. Before the roll-out of CAS in notified areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had fixed a ceiling of Rs five per pay channel.
Various broadcasters had raised objections on the cap, but consumer organisations had welcomed the move. Besides DTH, Kumar sought TRAI's view on channel pricing formula for non-CAS areas.
He also directed DTH operators Tata Sky and Zee-Turner to send a copy of their pleadings to TRAI, so that the regulator could have a view on it. TDSAT's remarks come even as confusion prevails among consumers in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai following the implementation of CAS in select areas.
Since pay channel prices under CAS are regulated, DTH firms have also been forced to lower costs in areas where CAS is being implemented. However, in areas outside CAS, overall costs of DTH are still perceived as high. Meanwhile, during proceedings TataSky, a 80:20 venture between Tata and Star India, contended that its DTH service had limited capacity and could not take all channels of Zee-Turner. "We could not expand our capacity due to technical restrictions as the recently-launched satellite of ISRO failed," TataSky counsel Ramji Srinivasan said, adding it left DTH operators with limited transponders capacity only. However, Zee-Turner counsel Maninder Singh opposed this, claiming TataSky had more space than the declared capacity. On this, the tribunal directed TRAI to look the technical aspects of DTH, regarding physical limitation of transponders. During proceedings, TataSky suggested that pricing of the channels should be based on popularity of the channels based on the survey conducted by audience measurement agencies like TAM and AC Neilson, overall subscription, advertisement revenue and under-declarations.
The New Cable TV Regime
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