[dreamdth]

With May coming to an end and only a month left for digitization, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry is trying its level best to get the stakeholders to a mutual consensus. A forum was organized by FICCI and I&B ministry in Mumbai to share some thoughts on ‘ India going Digital’.

Present at the event, Supriya Sahu, Joint Secretary (Broadband & Policy) and Rajiv Takru, Additional Secretary of Ministry of I&B heard what the cable operators of the city had to say. It is not a hidden fact that cable operators aren’t very happy with the whole process. Deadline date, revenue share and carriage fee were some of the strong points put forward by them.

Cable operators’ woes
The operators stood unanimous as they put their issues in front of I&B Ministry. The issues on which they wanted answers to varied from them being given a ‘chor’ tag to why they should collect entertainment tax for the state government.

Although the topic of revenue share was top of the list, none of the operators agreed with the 45:55 share with the MSOs and wanted the government to do something about it. “How will we survive?” they questioned. The cable operators want a bigger share in the pie; some even suggested of a full 100 per cent share.

Some operators even went on to tell the government to re-work the deadline and launch a phase-by-phase change, wherein both analog and digitization be allowed hand-in-hand, with only a few channels being converted in the beginning.

One operator even compared the cable operators with Jesus and said that they’ll be carrying the set-up boxes to their funerals. Availability of the set-up boxes is a major concern as many reminded the ministry representatives that MSOs have not been able to provide them with the boxes even as the deadline looms in. “How does the government expect us to meet the deadline when we haven’t been provided with the set-up boxes. We don’t even know if the demand will be met before the blackout. And how are we going to face the wrath of our customers when their television sets go blank?” questioned one operator.

Carriage fee was a topic on which all of them agreed upon, stating that they alone shouldn’t be allowed to bear its burden. They also wanted the ministry to intervene and tell the broadcasters to bring out their rate cards as soon as possible so that they can, in turn, inform their customers.

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[iS THAT ME]

Yeah, The government should work on smooth transition to Digitization instead of burdening the cable ops !