Nagpur: Television broadcasters such as Zee Entertainment, Star, and Sony Pictures have blocked access to their channels for some cable operators on non-compliance with the new tariff order 3.0, which came into effect on February 1. The move affected nearly 45 million consumers of cable TV operators, according to reports.
Cricket fans were furious as they could not watch the Second Test between India and Australia being played in New Delhi.
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Saturday 28 Sept. 2024
In November, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had restored the maximum retail price (MRP) of a TV channel to be a part of a bouquet to 19 from 12 earlier. With TRAI’s order, the television channel prices in the bouquet rose by about 10-15%, whereas the hike was steeper for some individual channel prices outside the bouquet.
According to reports, there is no stay by Kerala and the Karnataka High Courts on TRAI’s decision. As part of the regulations, we had given 48 hours to the local cable operators (who had not yet implemented) the tariff hikes, to comply with the order. We are bound by regulations to disconnect the channels,” an executive of a broadcasting company said on the condition of anonymity.
The executive added there have not been any hikes in five years, and this 10-15% hike after such a long time, is required for the smooth operations of the industry.
In contrast, the local cable TV operators said they are already witnessing a churn in their subscribers to OTT entertainment apps and with this tariff hike, the local cable TV industry might soon come to an end.
Currently, broadcasters claim that DTH (direct-to-home) such as Dish TV, Tata Play, and around 80% of the cable operators have complied with the new tariff order.
However, the majority of the members of All India Digital Cable Federation (AIDCF) including Reliance Industries-owned cable TV distribution companies such as Hathway Cable, and DEN Networks, are not complying with the order.
“The broadcasters are lying as 80% of the cable TV operators that have signed are not operational,” an executive of a local cable TV operator said, adding that the tariff hikes would benefit the broadcasters of about `5,000 crore.
On the other hand, broadcasters argue that there is a lot of content cost they have to incur and around 30% of the revenue comes from subscriptions.
“These cable TV operators are actually earning revenues from multiple sources like network capacity fee (NCF) from consumers, carriage fee, landing fee, and placement fee to include channels of small broadcasters. If they are concerned about tariff hikes for consumers, they should cut their NCF charges,” the executive at the broadcaster said.
As per TRAI’s order, NCF charges which are paid by the consumers are Rs 130 and Rs 160 per month, respectively. For `130, a consumer gets 100 free channels and for Rs 160, a consumer gets 200 free channels.
However, for a cable operator most of these channels which are part of NCF come at no cost, broadcasters said.
In its part, TRAI has said that consumers can save up to Rs 40-50 on the network capacity fee (NCF) as every consumer can now get 228 TV channels instead of 100 channels earlier, in a maximum NCF of `130. “Additionally, the amended NCF for multi-TV homes have enabled further savings to the consumers to the tune of 60% on second (and more) television sets,” TRAI said in its order.
