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Meera Mohanty

New Delhi, Nov. 30 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s tariff order to the cable television industry to unbundle its bouquets and offer channels under ceiling prices fixed by the former, may not be implemented from its December 1 deadline.

Broadcasters, such as Zee, Star and Sony and Multi-System Operators have not initiated dialogues. The matter is being heard by the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal. Last week, Mr Ramji Srinivas, council for Star, had argued that consumer groups had already told TRAI in July 2006, that technologically it was impossible to provide freedom of choice to a consumer in a non-Conditional Access System (CAS) area to which the order applies. “There is no provision at the consumer’s end to filter out the channels he does not want to see. When there is no addressability how can the consumer be serviced by a cable operator on an a la carte basis, he will only get whatever is flooding in into his television set,” said the head of a leading television company. Operators argue that they could provide voluntary CAS or addressability only if the broadcasters offered new channels outside of bouquets.

An individual consumer may not have absolute freedom of choice to create his own bouquet. However, it will still free a south Indian resident of Delhi from being forced to pay for three Punjabi channels, or a north Indian resident of Chennai from having to pay for a dozen Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam channels, says an MSO spokesperson.

CAS area subscribers pay up to Rs 5 per pay channel as per the order under CAS, implemented in Chennai and pockets of the three other metros. The October 4 ceiling order was hoping to make choice and pricing for television viewers in non-CAS areas comparable to that enjoyed by the four million served by Direct-to-Home and CAS.

Thirty free-to-air (FTA) channels will cost Rs 77 a month. Ceiling prices have been fixed for different numbers of channels. Cable prices for the same number of channels will vary from city to city but be uniform within cities, irrespective of the consumers’ address. A channel of your choice will cost you less than three times the average rate of the pay channel in the bouquet. A maximum ceiling price of Rs 260 has been fixed for 30 FTA and more than 45 pay channels.

MSOs claim that CAS experience indicates that customers only opt for 15-20 channels on an average, and could pay even less. But a revised and possibly leaner cable Bill will only be possible after January.

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