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

[RLOA]

It has filed a petition in the Supreme Court on the issue of 15 per cent cap on discount on a bouquet price of TV channels to consumers that had been set aside by Madras High Court while upholding TRAI’s right to regulate the broadcast...

Here is the petition. Can some lawyer please interpret this for us?

 

[nick813]

Gopi bro you are interpreting it in wrong way. Infact without this 15% discount cap TRAI Tariff Order will lose much of its relevance. Currently broadcasters have been forced to keep their A-La-Carte pricing within Rs. 19 limit but again in bouquet they are offering massive discount thus forcing subscribers to stay away from A-La-Carte and opt for all channels in their bouquet. This makes the main purpose of this ruling lose its teeth.

If TRAI wins this appeal then broadcasters will be forced to drop A-La-Carte rates too thus giving us freedom to choose our favorite channels as per choice.

You are absolutely right. Individual channel rates are too high for customers right now so they will obviously go for bouquets & broadcasters will have very less new contents, many scrap channels & more ads on such channels.

 

[Ashok Varma]

You are absolutely right. Individual channel rates are too high for customers right now so they will obviously go for bouquets & broadcasters will have very less new contents, many scrap channels & more ads on such channels.

Original content based Premium channels will be priced at Rs.19 and other scrap/repeated content channels will be priced under Rs.2/- to consumers is better.

 

[nick813]

Original content based Premium channels will be priced at Rs.19 and other scrap/repeated content channels will be priced under Rs.2/- to consumers is better.

Still 19 Rs per channel per customer is very high considering market size and revenue from advertisement. It should be below 7-8 Rs.

 

[RLOA]

I think TRAI should soon bring in two more regulations:

1. Pay channels should not show any adverts.
2. Technical interoperability is mandatory for all the platforms.

Then only this new tariff order will truly have the intended effects.

 

[Slu]

I think TRAI should soon bring in two more regulations:

1. Pay channels should not show any adverts.
2. Technical interoperability is mandatory for all the platforms.

Then only this new tariff order will truly have the intended effects.

Right

 

[Sarkar]

Gopi bro you are interpreting it in wrong way. Infact without this 15% discount cap TRAI Tariff Order will lose much of its relevance. Currently broadcasters have been forced to keep their A-La-Carte pricing within Rs. 19 limit but again in bouquet they are offering massive discount thus forcing subscribers to stay away from A-La-Carte and opt for all channels in their bouquet. This makes the main purpose of this ruling lose its teeth.

If TRAI wins this appeal then broadcasters will be forced to drop A-La-Carte rates too thus giving us freedom to choose our favorite channels as per choice.

Yes without that 15% cap new regulation will be useless.

Supreme court even acknowledge this if you read the judgement. But as Madras HC dismiss this and TRAI did not contest that so supreme court skip that.

Everyone should demand 15% cap

 

[Gopi27]

I think TRAI should soon bring in two more regulations:

1. Pay channels should not show any adverts.
2. Technical interoperability is mandatory for all the platforms.

1. Not at all Possible, Without Adverts Broadcasters wont be able to recover their investment.
2. TRAI is already working on STB Portability from long time if its successful in next few years it maybe introduced.

 

[Sarkar]

1. Not at all Possible, Without Adverts Broadcasters wont be able to recover their investment.
2. TRAI is already working on STB Portability from long time if its successful in next few years it maybe introduced.

TRAI made case 1 almost possible. Did you forget 12 min ad cap rule ? But broadcasters filed case and that is still pending in court just like 3 crore other cases are pending. :sleepy:

 

[RLOA]

1. Not at all Possible, Without Adverts Broadcasters wont be able to recover their investment.

I doubt whether that is the case. Broadcasters were doing fine before the days of the CAS/DAS. Cable operators were overtly reporting low subscriber numbers and everybody still made enough money. With the new regulation broadcasters are going to get paid for exactly the number of viewers they attract. Now it seems they are becoming greedy and converting previously FTA channels to paid, just to be able to place it in bouquets.