The Hindu Business Line : Hotel association puts three CAS options before TRAI

THE Federation of Hotel Restaurant Association of India has recommended three options to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for issuing regulatory instructions for a fair conditional access system (CAS) for the domestic hotel and restaurant industry.

The regulatory instructions will be needed, even in cases, where CAS is not introduced and the signals are being taken through the cable network.

As recommended by the federation, the first option stipulates that the hotels be permitted to install set top boxes (STBs) in each hotel room and any other place where TV broadcast is provided (for example restaurants). Encoded signals of pay channels will be received in the control room like such signals are being currently received. The hotel will pay monthly or quarterly or annual charges on the basis of number of connections in the hotel for the subscribed pay channels. Software charges per month will remain the same whether the hotel has STBs or relays the signals without them.

The second option suggests that hotels be allowed to choose signals through the cable operators since this will be convenient to those hotels that do not have hardware, decoders and in-house systems through their control rooms. A section of such hotels may be currently receiving the signals through a cable operator. In this case also, the hotels, whether they install STBs or not, will have to pay for the pay channels to cable operators.

The third option points out that there is technology available for interactive TV/CAS system. According to the federation, some hotels have already installed such interactive systems even before the introduction of CAS. These systems also have the technology to allow the hotel to monitor the pay channels that were viewed in a particular hotel room on a particular day. The monitoring system is such that the figures are also available to the service providers through computer chips placed in each TV and through the central hardware in the hotel.

In the case of the third option, pay channel charges can be proportionately fixed for per channel per day and hotels should only pay for each channel for a particular day on the basis of the viewing pattern in each hotel room. This would be similar to the cable or CAS system, except for the difference in the system of billing.

Besides these options, the federation has requested TRAI to consider that the charges per month or the proportionate charges per day for hotel guestrooms should be the same as applicable for per home through cable operators. It is stated that the intensity of viewing in a hotel room is much less than in a home, while majority guests in hotels either do not put on the TV or may see news or some programmes briefly. Moreover, in certain hotels more than 60 per cent of their guests are foreigners, many of them from non-English speaking countries, and their viewing of TV in hotels in very limited.

Since the customer service and the quality of viewing in hotel is identical to that provided for home connections, the federation argues that there is no justification for charging a higher price from hotel rooms, that also four to five times higher.

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