Surprisingly, the time government did not approve to further extension and thus, released the fourth list of Provisional Registration of MSOs on 31st December. Unexpectedly, many states appealed for an extension and five states managed to get an extension of about 2 months including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Sikkim and recently Odisha.
According to Jeevan Khanna, Founder, Lucknow9, the government is very much aware regarding the lack of set-top boxes availability and lease line issues.
Sharing his thoughts, Khanna said, “Some more time should be given,at least two months and the ministry should take report from their task force on daily basis. Apart from this, provision license should be issued to everyone so that they can move to next hurdle and find relevant solutions.”
MIB cancelled a number of prior issued provisional licenses for not receiving clearance from Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). A number of other MSOs also applied for and received licenses but did not use them for operations, leading into cancellation of licenses by the MIB.
Commenting on the license issue, Govindaraju Kariyappa, Director, All Digital Cable, said, “Government is making the right decisions. After taking licence, operators should start its implementation with immediately. But operators are not doing so, thus government is forced to cancel their licence.”
Major issues faced are shortage of STBs and their delivery and pending interconnect agreements with broadcasters.
On the other side, Vinod Gupta, Founder, Vinod Cables believes that government should issue the provision licence within a week. Without provisional licence an operator can’t process the implementation.
“This extension should be given at a pan-India level. Converting from analogue to digital is a time consuming process and it require funds as well. As soon as an operator applies for licence, government should provide at least a provisional licence, so that operator can make his strategy for implementation. Since, it’s a new technology, there are many issues, which an operator has to face at the ground level,” expressed Gupta.
However, in 13th task meeting which was held on 31st December 2015, MIB claimed that 86.25 per cent of TV households have been digitised in DAS Phase III.Out of the 685 areas including West Bengal where 280 areas were removed soon after the Task Force meeting), 450 areas had less than 1000 TV households and 226 from 1000 to 5000 TV households.
Sharing his thoughts, Nagesh Chabria, Promoter, Riddhi Bhima, said, “Unavailability of the set top boxes has been a major reason an extension in DAS III deadlines in Maharashtra. Another important reason is that there is no digital link in these areas. We have tried with different networks from Airtel BSNL etc, however the problem remains the same. It would have been ideal if the government would have announced an extension in deadline of about 2 to 3 months across India.”
R Jaya, Joint Secretary, Broadcasting informed during the meeting that only 190 out of 510 registered MSOs (Phase III) are entering seeding data in the Management Information System (MIS).
A total of 135 MSOs have still not logged into MIS and 185 MSOs have logged but have not reported any seeding. She said the Ministry had granted 567 registrations so far. Ninety applications are under process and 35 applications are pending clarifications. Affidavits are awaited from 170 applicants. About 100 applications were received in November and December.
On the other side Nashik Zilla Cable operators association had also filed a petition due to less supply of set top boxes. They now have an extension of 6 weeks.
“But there is a lack of public awareness in DAS III areas. At present, there are 30% households in the slums who don’t have the capacity to pay that amount and hence they are not supportive. Also, the cable rates in the slums are Rs. 100 to 150 per month and after DAS III it will easily cross Rs 250. That’s the reason those people want to opt for DTH services as they still provide packages from Rs 99 to Rs 150, opined Nand Chhapru, Partner, Konak Dossire IP Pvt Ltd.
The recap
In December 2011, the LokSabha passed a Bill making digitisation of cable television mandatory in India, starting with the top metros on or before June 30, 2012 and pan-India by 2014.
Later the conversion of analogue to digital accessible system (DAS) was divided into four phases. The first phase covered the four metro cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. Over 12 million set-top boxes have been seeded in phase I and II.
In Phase II, on 31st March 2013, 38 cities across 15 states were digitised, including 9 cities of Maharashtra, 7 cities of UP and 5 cities of Gujarat.
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has announced the Phase III is likely to begin from April 2015.
However, the initial deadline set by the UPA Government was December, 2014 and the new Government further extended it by pointing out, that they require extra time to arrange for lesser priced Set Top Boxes, digital head ends and requirement of licenses by small cable operators to arrange function with Digital Addressable System.
The final switchover phase, which covers the rest of India, will take place by 31stDecember 2016.
