TRAI releases draft tariff order for non-addressable Cable TV systems

The regulatory body has sought comments from stakeholders on the draft by December 15, 2014

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | December 4, 2014

The Telecom Regularity Authority India (TRAI) has released a draft tariff order, namely the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services (non-addressable systems) tariff order, on December 1, for consultation with stakeholders.

The stakeholders have been asked to give their comments on this draft tariff by December 15, 2014. The comments may be sent preferably in electronic form to Warsi Ahmed, Advisor (B&CS). The comments can be seen on the official website of TRAI.

The salient points of the draft tariff include:

• Existing mechanism to continue to regulate wholesale tariff
• Rates of new pay channels and the channels converted from fee-to-air (FTA) to pay, to be specified by the broadcasters following the existing similarity principle
• Broadcasters to mandatory offer all their channels on a la carte basis, broadcasters are also free to offer bouquets in addition
• Revenue share between the operators to be decided on mutual negotiations
• Operators, implementing digital addressable cable TV systems (DAS) before the notified cut-off dates, to be governed by the DAS regulatory regime
• For regulating the retail tariff, three slabs along with rate ceilings have been prescribed, on pan-India basis. Slabs are based on the number of pay and FTA channels offered by an operator
• Operators to provide to the consumers, bills and receipts for payments for the subscribed cable TV services.

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