Good News TRAI wins the tariff order case against Star in Supreme Court

[Basil]

Star India Arguement

• Star India had contended that the impugned clauses have the effect of regulating programmes and television channels, their pricing and their marketing and manner of offering/ bundling, which is beyond the scope of TRAI’s jurisdiction of regulating “means of transmission”.
• They contended that TRAI Act is carriage centric and thus limited to regulation of service in transmission alone.
• According to them, tariff, which relates to content, is governed by the Copyright Act and not by the TRAI Act.
• The aforesaid regulations are outside the power of TRAI under the TRAI Act and must thus be struck down.

TRAI Arguement

• TRAI Act was conceived in the public interest in order to protect the interests of both service providers.
• He further argued that the appellants (Star India) in the present case had been taking contradictory stands throughout. As an example of such stand, he referred to an Order of the Competition Commission of India dated 27.2.2018, in which he referred to the stand of the appellants stating that the Competition Commission had no jurisdiction to look into pricing and the manner of offering TV channels, which lies in the domain of the sectoral regulator TRAI and is, therefore, an occupied field.
• TRAI doesn't seek to or in fact regulate content of what is broadcasted so that any reference to this Act would be wholly irrelevant for the purpose of deciding this case.

Supreme Court

• We are of the view that the provisions of the TRAI Act have to be viewed in the light of protection of the interests of both service providers and consumers.
• It is interesting to note, as has been stated by Shri Dwivedi, that in Star India’s response to the consultative paper of 29.1.2016, Star India itself has requested that the Regulation and Tariff Order be fixed on the basis of the principles that are now contained therein.
• It is only when TRAI issued a second consultation paper dated 4.5.2016 that Star India submitted its response in June, 2016 where it raised for the first time the issue relating to the Copyright Act as an afterthought. What is important to notice is that even in this response, Star India reiterated that discount caps should be provided for as this checks discriminatory behavior during negotiation and will facilitate designing of discount criteria based on intelligible differentia which will help serve the diverse needs of consumers. In a third response to the draft regulations and tariff order, Star India raised jurisdictional issues of TRAI.
• We are, therefore, clearly of the view that the Regulation and the Tariff Order have been made keeping the interests of the stakeholders and the consumers in mind and are intra vires the regulation power contained in Section 36 of the TRAI Act.
• TRAI, while exercising its regulatory functions under the TRAI Act, does not at all, in substance, impinge upon any of these rights, but merely acts, as has been stated hereinabove, as a regulator, in the public interest.

Full Judgement

 

[iphifi]

The main thrust of the arguments of both Dr. Singhvi and Mr. Chidambaram were also by copious reference to the 100 Copyright Act, 1957, which, according to them, showed that once the Copyright Act steps in, TRAI must necessarily step out.

Chidambaram and Singhvi were really just wasting time. They argued that copyright is violated by TRAI regulation. Lawyer representing DTHs argued that they do not pay broadcasters on individually copyrights but according to the copyright act it is automatically passed down from creator to broadcaster to MSO to customer. SC noted that all broadcasters have the right to price their channels above the regulatory price as an alacarte channel. SC said TRAI act and copyright act do not overlap in this case. TRAI lawyer used Star's own response to the tariff order in which they requested maximum discount to operator should be capped at 33%. (TRAI fixed it at 35%). So the argument for arbitrary pricing was itself killed by Star.

 

[Vadirocks]

Have To Watch!

Now How Star Will Counter Attack This!

 

[Digital Mastermind]

Have To Watch!

Now How Star Will Counter Attack This!

What can they do now, SC has squashed their appeal

 

[Abhi]

Its really a amazing news
Star truly deserves it!!

 

[IndiaN]

Anybody Have price list of zee and otv network channels

 

[Vadirocks]

 

[avipersistent]

Great news .Sony has already complied with TRAI order but both Tata Sky and Dishtv are wrangling on price issues while Star has not complied but Dishtv has done the agreement and most of the channels are present from Star on Dishtv barring some regional ones.

 

[Sreejith Ms]

The trai price is 19is very high now some pay channels get 10rs after the implementation of this rules they charged the price 10to 19rs..??

 

[Choco7905]

The trai price is 19is very high now some pay channels get 10rs after the implementation of this rules they charged the price 10to 19rs..??

Maximum is 19 & that too for HD. Currently, no DTH provides HD channels at ₹10. SD & HD channels are provided at ₹10 & 20 respectively & that too by some DTHs.