The Hindu Business Line : Chennai alone toes CAS line

LIVING in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai and expecting your favourite pay channels to be yanked off because you did not possess a set-top box (STB)? Well, not really.

The Government's ambitious plans of regulating the rather chaotic cable industry by implementing the conditional access system (CAS) seems to have been largely unsuccessful with just Chennai falling in line.

Mumbai and Kolkata missed Monday's deadline and households here continue to receive pay channels without a set-top box.

While in Mumbai, the Shiv Sena cast a spoke in the rollout process; the West Bengal Government has sought a few extra days time to implement the system.

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry, on its part, is not willing to defer the CAS in Mumbai.

The CAS Implementation Committee, which met here today, took stock of the rollover process.

According to I&B officials, "CAS has been implemented in Chennai, and we hope that it will rollout in Kolkata in the next 2-3 days. Mumbai only remains the main issue."

In fact, the cable industry had asked the Government to go easy on the implementation of CAS in the metro on account of the ongoing Ganesh Chaturthi festival.

The Shiv Sena controls over 10,000 cable operators in Mumbai. According to Mr Anil Parab, the Shiv Sena representative on the Committee, "CAS has not been implemented in Mumbai. There is no demand for boxes. And CAS should first be implemented in Delhi and then only in Mumbai." CAS was deferred in Delhi due to "political compulsions".

However, the large multi-system operators (MSOs) in Mumbai are hopeful that the issue will be sorted out. Currently, very few set-top boxes have been installed in households. Mr K. Jayaraman of Hathway, said that just 400-450 boxes have been seeded. "Issues such as revenue share between cable service providers and broadcasters have not been finalised and there are some issues relating to security," he said.

Over to States?

WITH the chaos surrounding the implementation of CAS, the Government may consider involving the States in future.

Sources in the I&B Ministry said that after the recent experience, the Government may leave the implementation of CAS to the State Governments.

Also, with regard to Mumbai, while the Ministry has not decided to defer CAS, sources said that in case there is a further delay, the Government might have to renotify new dates.

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