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Direct to Home (DTH) majors, including Tata Play and Dish TV, have written to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), seeking a level-playing field with over-the-top (OTT) content distributors. Responding to the consultation paper, set up by the TRAI, seeking comments on how to improve ease of doing business in the telecom sector, DTH players said the industry has been struggling under the burden of undue licensing, while OTT continues its fast-paced growth without any licensing burden.
“The DTH sector has been operational for several years, and provides employment to large section of the society. However, the DTH sector is finding it difficult to thrive in recent years, owing to numerous factors, including fast paced growth of OTT with no regulatory and licence framework,” Tata Play told the regulator.
Discriminatory licence fee regime
Dish TV further added that the discriminatory licence fee regime for DTH has been creating a non-level-playing field. “The present licence fee is discriminatory against DTH operators, and is designed to provide the leveraged position to cable operator, HITS, IPTV, MSO and OTT platforms. On account of such additional burden, the DTH subscriber is discriminated and has to bear higher burden.”
Expanding on the lack of level-playing field vis a vis OTT providers, Tata Play said: “While the government has brought OTT under the ambit of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) by way of its Gazette Notification, dated November 10, 2020, OTT platforms continue to provide same services as the broadcast Industry, but without any licensing framework or regulations.”
“The IT Intermediary Guidelines 2021 also do not address the gross discrimination being faced by the DTH industry on issues including but not limited to licence fee and cross-holding restrictions,” said Tata Play.
In order to improve regulations in this area, Tata Play suggested: “To bring a level-playing field, MIB may either include OTTs under the umbrella of DPOs and put in place a licensing and regulatory framework to govern OTTs in line with the framework governing DTH operators, or alternatively, modify the licensing and regulatory regime governing DTH operators to remove fetters such as licence fees, advertisement code and programme code and TRAI’s regulatory regime and bring back forbearance. This will ensure healthy competition in the industry and lead to a balanced growth in the economy.”
The DTH industry has long been saying that they do not enjoy a level-playing field with other content distributors, as they are bogged down by undue licence fee and regulations.
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