The Hindu Business Line : Govt, DTH players to discuss interoperability of set-top boxes

The mandate of technical interoperability allows consumers to shift from one service provider to another without having to reinvest in a new STB and dish.

Meera Mohanty

New Delhi, Feb. 21 The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has called for a meeting of DTH licence holders to resolve the impasse over the issue on technical interoperability of set-top boxes (STB).

The mandate of technical interoperability allows consumers to shift from one service provider to another without having to reinvest in a new STB and dish. However, TRAI’s January recommendations calling for current STB standards to be upgraded from MPEG 2 to a more advanced MPEG 4 will actually make interoperability obligations impossible, say service providers.

While the recommendations do not require upgrade for existing consumers, operators themselves feel not doing so will be discriminatory. “By using technology as an entry barrier, the regulator is actually making technical interoperability (a mandate under the license agreements) impossible for close to five million consumers (excluding DD Direct’s),” says Mr Vikram Kaushik, Managing Director and CEO, Tata Sky.

Format hurdles

Tata Sky and Dish TV use MPEG 2 compression formats as well as boxes, while new players like Reliance and Bharti Telemedia’s services are expected in MPEG 4 format, not viewable through MPEG 2 boxes. Being a stronger compression technology, MPEG 4 services can also accommodate 20-30 per cent more channels for the same bandwidth.

Only future consumers as well as Sun TV’s current consumers will be able to change service providers; although a conditional access module (CAM) card enables the box to read other feeds, MPEG 2 boxes will not work with MPEG 4 feeds. (Currently the cards are not available to consumers and at close to STB prices, are a tad expensive, say operators).

The next player can offer services at a bargain with a CAM card alone, a likely strategy for a regional DTH player, says Mr Jawahar Goel, Managing Director, Dish TV. “When you are looking at a possible market of 10 million, you can source cards for a lot less and offer services at a bargain,” he says.

Numbers should also take into account another million boxes already ordered, under transhipment or in warehouses.

Upgrade feasibility

Tata Sky and Dish TV also argue that upgrading existing boxes — the technology would have to be developed and tested — would be a significant cost. “Let the Government undertake the expense if they want us to do that, or find a way to compensate or subsidise the cost of upgrading,” says Mr Kaushik.

TRAI in its recommendations admits, “It will not be operationally feasible for a DTH operator using MPEG 2 format to upgrade the MPEG 2-based STBs of millions of existing subscribers to MPEG 4 format.”

But a senior TRAI official predicts market forces will step in.

Just like hardware costs almost half its earlier price today, DTH operators will find schemes and bundled packages to capture these subscribers, he says.

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