The Hindu Business Line : Laudable legislation

CABLE TV subscribers all over Tamil Nadu, and certainly within the Chennai city, must have felt overjoyed by the prospect of being rescued from the clutches of private multi-system operators (MSOs). The State Government's Bill to take over those who were hitherto exploiting to the hilt their monopolistic status and political patronage to become a law unto themselves without any sense of accountability in their dealings with customers is timely and laudable. Someone had to crack the whip since neither the concerned Union Ministry nor the TRAI seemed to be alive to the suffocating frustration and helplessness prevalent among subscribers.

They have for years had no means of ventilating their pent-up complaints about the arbitrary nature of the service and whimsical jacking up of the charges without any explanation or excuse. Sometime in December 2003, the TRAI froze at the then level the rates at which the charges were to be paid by the cable subscribers to cable operators, by the cable operators to the MSOs and by the latter to broadcasters with respect to both free-to-air and pay channels, and for all areas, whether under the conditional access system or not. For aught the subscribers know or the MSOs and operators care, this order has remained a dead letter.

Subscribers get stuck with their particular area operators with no option to change them nor do they have any recourse to challenge the fees demanded by them, often without even giving proper receipts. There is also no certainty as to the number and choice of channels, which keep changing without notice. Subscribers in Karnataka, for instance, have far more number of free channels, including History, Discovery, National Geographic, NBC and CNN, available to them for a lower fee than those in Tamil Nadu.

Some of the MSOs of Tamil Nadu had grown so arrogant that they did not bother to attend a customer-MSO-operator interface meet organised by the Consumer Action Group some time ago. The local operators too behave in a customer-hostile manner, never responding to queries. I have never once seen my area operator in all the 12-15 years I have had cable TV; he shies away from customers, avoiding them even when they try to meet him in his office.

The Tamil Nadu Government has earned the gratitude of cable subscribers by passing a long overdue Act to do away with private MSOs.