• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

Regulation of interconnect pact with broadcasters, DTH providers proposed

New Delhi May 8 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has released stakeholders' views on several issues for its consultation paper on Direct to Home.

Stakeholders included broadcasters, existing DTH operators — Tata Sky and Dish TV — Reliance Bluemagic and Sun Direct, who have licence for DTH service and cable associations.

Among the issues covered was the need to regulate interconnection agreements between broadcasters and DTH service providers. Sun Direct and Reliance Bluemagic called for regulation, arguing that, in practice, consumers did not have a choice between cable and DTH. Tata Sky was of the same view, but emphasised that an interconnect agreement would be useful and effective only once the `commercial and tariff framework' was in place for DTH.

The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA), Sony Entertainment Television and Star were of the view that sufficient regulations for interconnection agreements were already in place and further regulation was not necessary and could interfere with the operation of market forces.

On the issues of carriage fees, Sun Direct was not in favour of regulation. The telecom regulator has not at all intervened on the issue of carriage fee in cable distribution, and should not regulate the DTH space, argued the Chennai-based company.

Tata Sky pointed out that DTH platforms worked on pay television model and had to balance various content segments, catering to different audiences, and asked for DTH providers to be allowed an element of partial exclusivity for niche content. It also called for broadcasters not to dictate carriage of all their channels keeping in view the limited capacity and national presence of DTH providers. Zee, which has an ongoing dispute with Tata Sky over the issue, also wanted the `Must Carry' issue carefully considered.

The broadcaster further pointed out that the carriage capacity of DTH operators could be augmented as and when the additional transponders were available in Ku Band.

On the matter of mandating Quality of Service Standards, Tata Sky and Zee believed it was not required, while Dish TV suggested a charter agreed by the industry and endorsed and monitored by TRAI.

Neo Sports Broadcast, which had an issue with Doordarshan's DTH platform's unencrypted signals earlier this year, called for provisions to protect content providers from violation of intellectual property rights, suggesting platforms that provide `exclusive' fee with a watermark of the platform.

More Stories on : Regulatory Bodies & Rulings | Radio/TV

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
HelloSoft working on next gen dual mode handsets

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line