Sun Network on 22 November had amended its Reference Interconnect Offer to change the LCN slabs in which the distributors of television channels have to place the broadcaster’s channels in order to be eligible for the LCN incentives. The new RIO was first spotted by DreamDTH.
DreamDTH compared the older version of Sun Network’s RIO with the newer version RIO of Sun Network. In our findings, we found that the broadcaster had changed the LCN slabs for 12 of its channels out of the 31 pay channel it broadcasts.
Movie and Comedy channels were the main ones whose LCN slabs have changed. The new LCN slabs are much bigger than the earlier ones and give the DPOs a chance to be eligible for more Sun Networks LCN incentive compared to earlier.
The broadcaster had also changed the genre of its channels. The genre of 10 of its channel has been changed. All of them have been moved from their Movie genre to the General Entertainment channel genre in their existing language.
The broadcaster, however, made no changes whatsoever to its ala-carte pricing and broadcaster bouquet pricing. Sun Network was the only network from the Big 5 which hadn’t rolled any promotional offer in the festive season.
The RIO will come into effect a month from the date of notification as per the rules of the New Tariff Order. However, DPOs won’t be needed to sign the new RIO unless they wish to do or the existing RIO expires as the regulations don’t mandate the DPO to sign the amended RIO unless the existing one expires.
