In what would be a big bonanza for the 76 million cable television homes in the country, the conditional access system (CAS) may finally see a 55-city roll-out, including its extension in rest of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, from January next year.

As the CAS technology gives the consumers a choice in watching television channels with assured quality of service and affordable pricing, a nationwide CAS roll-out will bring down the average monthly cable bills of the consumers by almost half to about Rs 150-Rs 200.

CAS will also ensure that consumers get an itemised bill from their cable operators, mentioning the price of all channels subscribed to along with all the taxes levied on them.

Currently, CAS is only enforced in south Delhi, south Mumbai, south Kolkata and Chennai. The consumers there have to pay Rs 77 for free-to-air channels and Rs 5 per pay channel apart from monthly rental for the set-top box, a device mandatory for enforcing CAS, if they take it on rent from the cable service provider.

A detailed plan for the 55-city CAS roll-out is currently being prepared by the two apex cable industry body -- Cable Operators Federation of India (COFI) and the Multi-System Operator (MSO) Alliance -- at the behest of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B).

The detailed plan has to be submitted to the ministry by March 24.

"A notification mandating the enforcement of CAS by January 2009 may come out as early as June after discussions with all stakeholders, including the broadcasters. Also, the rental of set-top box may come down by 50 per cent to Rs 250 per box," a source involved with the roll-out plan for CAS told Business Standard.

Last year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended a 55-city CAS roll-out in phases manner between October 2008 and March 2011.

Responding to the proposed nationwide CAS roll-out becoming a reality, MSO Alliance president Ashok Mansukhani said: "We are extremely happy that the CAS roll-out and digitalisation of the cable sector has been taken up by the I&B ministry in the right earnest. Both digitalisation of the cable sector and CAS are a must for the sector to grow."

"A nationwide CAS will also fuel the demand for set-top boxes that will force the prices of set-top box to come down to Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500, compared with Rs 2,500-Rs 3,000 currently," industry analysts said. Currently, all CAS boxes are being imported.