When cellular telephony started in India, Bharti and Reliance took two divergent approaches towards launching cellular services — Airtel decided to focus on providing the services, leaving third party players to provide the hardware, while Reliance decided went with CDMA, a technology in which everything was more tightly controlled. Despite the obvious technological shortcomings of […]
Discovery Communications, India’s biggest provider of infotainment content, has taken broadcasting regulator TRAI to the Delhi High Court for the second time in three years for trying to bring down prices of individual TV channels. TRAI had earlier this month announced a move to force channel owners to bring the prices of their individual channels […]
Media regulator TRAI has shot off letters to most of the top cable TV feed providers in India, asking them to allow users to change their packs, and ensure that their business partners provide itemized billing to customers and pay tax to the government. It, however, remains to be seen how cable feed providers are […]
TV channel owners have indicated that they may again take media regulator TRAI to court over its latest move to ‘unbundle’ televisions channels. TRAI’s latest move, unveiled in a consultation paper earlier this month, is the second such in the last three years. Star India and Discovery Communications had taken TRAI to court in 2017 […]
Arasu Cable, the government-owned cable feed provider in Tamil Nadu, has become the first big player to drastically reduce the monthly network charge under TRAI’s new tariff order, throwing a challenge to the likes of Tata Sky, Dish TV, Hathway and Sun Direct. Arasu Cable’s new base plan of Rs 130 contains six broadcaster packs […]
Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm and Reliance Industries, is all set to unveil attractive broadband-cum-TV plans under Reliance Gigafiber at the annual general meeting of Reliance Industries at 11 AM. The plans have been a well kept secret, but according to early indications, the company will offer free cable TV and 200 […]
Reliance Jio GigaFiber, the new wired broadband and cable TV service from India’s biggest telecom operator by volumes, is likely to offer free cable TV and high-speed broadband for Rs 500 per month. The customer is likely to have to make an initial upfront payment of around Rs 3,000, which would enable him to avail […]
Flooded by complaints about cable and DTH players not allowing consumers to change their channel packs and subscriptions, India’s media regulator has come up with a proposal to allow consumers to change their channels and packs using the TRAI website. This will be achieved through a single app — similar to TRAI’s existing ‘channel selector’ […]
Bharti Airtel’s India numbers indicated that the company did indeed hit the bottom in the December quarter of last year, and continued to improve its numbers from then on. Airtel, which had seen its India revenue fall to Rs 14,768 cr in the December quarter, had improved it to Rs 15,241 cr in the quarter […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, which recently come in for a lot of pummeling from the small cable operators for its new tariff rules, has now emerged as a savior of the same set of operators as it has dismissed government’s suggestion of fixing a ‘net worth’ requirement for cable feed providers. Ministry of […]
GTPL Hathway, one of the country’s largest cable feed providers and the biggest MSO in Gujarat, said it expects media regulator TRAI to make further changes to the TV tariff order introduced in February this year. Speaking to analysts after announcing the quarterly earnings of the cable feed provider, officials — including MD Aniruddhasinhji Jadega […]
The new TV tariff system introduced by TRAI, which gives channel owners the full power to price their channels, does not seem to have hurt the earnings of cable networks as much as feared. It was feared that because the pricing power over channels was taken away from distributors like cable and DTH operators and […]
One of the key aspects of the new tariff order of the TRAI that came into effect from February 1 was the uniformity of pricing among channels. The distributor — a cable or DTH operator — had to charge the same network fee for any channel, irrespective of content or ownership. So, whether it was […]
Three of the five paid DTH platforms in India — Tata Sky, Airtel Digital and D2h — have announced multi TV, or multiple connection, plans under the new TV channel tariff regime implemented by TRAI this month. The new schemes, which give discounts on a subscriber’s second, third and fourth connections at their home, were […]
Cable and DTH users can now watch Star India’s sports and English channels at 30% lower cost as India’s largest broadcaster has introduced smaller, more affordable channel packs in these two genres. The move is seen as a reaction to the feedback given by the market to the company’s previous line up. Till now, Star […]
Free-to-air English news channels like Republic TV and Al Jazeera have got a massive boost in their reach, while paid Hindi entertainment and movie channels have seen the biggest drop in reach after the implementation of the new TRAI tariff scheme, according to data from Chrome Data Analytics & Media, one of the world’s largest […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India today set the cat among the pigeons among cable and DTH operators by saying that customers should be given the option of continuing with their long duration packs if they so desire. This has potential negative implications for all operators, including Tata Sky, D2h and Airtel Digital, as all […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority has given time till Mar 30 for those subscribers who have not exercised their choice under new TV channel plans. The cable and DTH providers have been told to move customers who fail to exercise their choice to a ‘best fit plan’ according to their channel choices and plan. It should […]
Media regulator TRAI clarified that nothing in the new tariff regime prevents cable and DTH operators from offering discounts on the network charges payable by customers. Accordingly, it said, some of the cable and DTH operators have restarted their discounted multi TV offers. The topic of ‘multi-connections’ — or multiple connections within the same household […]
Media regulator TRAI said it has issued a show cause notice to a ‘large’ platform operator for showing black screens to its customers during the migration to the new TV channel tariff scheme. It did not give the name of the platform operator, merely noting that it was a large one. TRAI, keen to avoid […]
