TRAI gives stakeholders till Oct 14 to respond to draft broadcasting–cable interconnection rules

New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has extended the last date for stakeholder comments on its draft Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2025 to October 14, 2025. 

The draft was issued on September 22, 2025 with an original deadline of October 6, 2025. TRAI said the extension follows requests from stakeholders and indicated no further extensions will be entertained.

The amendment, scheduled to take effect from April 1, 2026, proposes wide-ranging compliance changes for broadcasters and distributors, anchored in a move from calendar-year to financial-year audits to align with industry accounting cycles.

The measures follow a consultation that began in August 2024, where broadcasters sought stronger audit rights to reduce revenue leakage, while distributors argued that mandatory annual audits create cost and duplication

What changes for distributors and broadcasters

• Annual audits tied to the financial year: Every distributor of television channels must get its addressable systems audited each year for the preceding financial year. This covers the Subscriber Management System (SMS), Conditional Access System (CAS), Digital Rights Management (DRM) and related platforms.
  
  
• Who can audit: Audits are to be conducted by Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL) or by auditors empanelled by TRAI.
  
  
• Timelines and sharing: Distributors must share audit reports with all broadcasters by September 30 each year and give at least 30 days’ advance notice of the audit schedule and appointed auditor. Broadcasters may depute one representative to observe and provide inputs during the audit.
  
  
• Small-operator relief: Distributors with 30,000 or fewer active subscribers on the last day of the preceding financial year are exempt from mandatory annual audits. However, broadcasters may commission one audit per year of such distributors if required.
  
  
• If a distributor misses the deadline: Where a distributor fails to share its audit report by September 30, broadcasters, individually or jointly, may commission an audit at their own expense, limited to once a year and to be completed within four months starting September 30.
  
  
• Covering prior unaudited periods: When the new rules take effect, any unaudited period before the first financial-year audit must also be audited, closing a long-standing compliance gap.
  
  
• Auditor accountability: Auditors must furnish a certificate of independence and confirm the audit was conducted in line with TRAI regulations.
  
  

Dispute resolution and enforcement

• Objections window: If a broadcaster disputes a distributor’s audit report, it must raise specific objections with evidence within 30 days.
  
  
• Auditor response: The distributor must forward objections to the auditor within seven days; the auditor then has 30 days to address them and issue an updated report, which the distributor must share with the broadcaster within seven days.
  
  
• Escalation to TRAI: If unresolved, the broadcaster may approach TRAI with evidence. After examination, the regulator may allow a special audit at the broadcaster’s cost.
  
  
• Commercial settlement: In case of subscriber-number discrepancies, settlements will follow interconnection agreement terms.
  
  
• Signal disconnection: If an audit finds a distributor’s systems do not meet specifications, broadcasters may disconnect signals after three weeks’ notice.
  
  

Penalties aligned to financial year

• Failure to complete the annual audit attracts Rs 1,000 per day for up to 30 days of default and Rs 2,000 per day thereafter, capped at Rs 2 lakh per financial year.
  
  

Infrastructure sharing, watermarking and consumer experience

• The draft incorporates the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting’s infrastructure-sharing guidelines into the interconnection framework.
  
  
• Where distributors share infrastructure, they must run separate instances of SMS, CAS or DRM to ensure entity-wise data segregation and reconciliation.
  
  
• For watermarking and logos, infrastructure providers will insert them at the encoder end, while infrastructure seekers will add theirs via set-top boxes or middleware. To avoid on-screen clutter, consumers should preferably see only two logos at any time—that of the broadcaster and the last-mile distributor.