From Wednesday, Multi-System Operators (MSOs) and Direct-to-Home (DTH) service providers will start running a ‘consumer information channel” on their platforms following a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) directive.

Sunil K Gupta, Secretary, TRAI told BusinessLine , “We have asked all Distribution Platform Operators (DPOs) to start a consumer information channel on their platform. We expect all DPOs to start running this from Wednesday.”

As per TRAI guidelines, all DTH and MSO service providers need to reach out to at least 30 per cent of their average subscriber base by January 7, 60 per cent by January 14, and 100 per cent by January 21.

The DPOs will need to migrate the subscribers to the new framework from Feburary 1.

For easy discoverability, all MSOs and DTH platforms will run the channel on LCN 999, which will give consumers information regarding MRPs of various channels and how they can exercise their option of choosing from them.

TRAI has also begun seeking daily reports from the DPOs regarding implementation of the new framework. “In order to ensure that all stakeholders are making appropriate efforts to seek options from consumers (regarding the channels that they want to watch), we have made internal arrangements to get reports from the DPOs. This will help us review the status of compliance and the level of choices exercised by the consumers and see the effectiveness of the implementation of the new regulatory framework on the ground,” Gupta added.

“The new regulatory framework is primarily focused on empowering consumers. They must exercise their choice and choose only those channels that they want to watch and not come under any pressure to choose a bouquet if they feel they don’t like most of the channels in a bouquet,” Gupta said. “Also, consumers should exercise their choice as soon as possible, and not wait till January 31 ,” he added.

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