The Hindu Business Line : Ministry signals cheaper digital TV option

The decision to bring HITS has been taken with the consumers’ interests in mind since it will enable quality TV transmission at an affordable price.

Thomas K. Thomas
Debabrata Das

New Delhi, Nov. 11 Consumers will soon get a cheaper option of watching digital television with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting proposing to charge zero annual licence fee from Headend In The Sky (HITS) service providers.

The Ministry has sent its final guidelines to the Union Cabinet for ratification.

HITS involves delivery of digital television signals directly to cable operators via satellite. Cable operators then pass on the digital channels to consumers, using cable lines. Compared to existing digital broadcasting platforms such as DTH and Conditional Access System, HITS has the advantage of spreading digitalisation throughout the country at one go because of the country-wide footprint of satellites.

“No annual fee is prescribed as such, services need to be incentivised to bring down the cost of digitisation of cable services and to ensure financial viability of HITS operators and enable them to compete with DTH,” said a Ministry source.

DTH players unhappy

DTH players are, however, not too happy with the move as they have to pay 10 per cent of their annual revenues to the Government as licence fee.

“HITS services are being seen as a competition to the DTH services, then how can there be difference in Government levies. If the objective is to provide affordability then DTH operators should also be allowed to provide these services without payment of the licence fee,” said one of the DTH players.

They also said that introduction of HITS will add to the capacity crunch on satellite transponders which could stall their plans to introduce high definition TV.

Senior officials in TRAI said that the decision to bring HITS has been taken with the consumers’ interests in mind since it will enable quality TV transmission at an affordable price. “With the operationalisation of HITS, the competition between DTH and digital cable network will work for the ultimate benefit of the consumer,” TRAI officials said.

The guidelines finalised by the I and B Ministry is in line with the recommendations of the TRAI whereby HITS operators will have to obtain a licence from the Government by paying an entry fee of Rs 10 crore. The companies will need to have a minimum net worth of Rs 10 crore for applying for a licence.

Uplinking will be allowed in both C-Band and Ku-Band only from India. The Ministry has permitted HITS players to have up to 74 per cent foreign direct investment.

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