New tariff rules for DTH services soon, says TRAI member
Wednesday, May 06th, 2009
PUNE: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in consultation with ministries concerned, would formulate new tariff regulations for Direct-To-Home (DTH) services soon, said TRAI member R N Prabhakar here today.
A four-member TRAI panel headed by Prabhakar held an open house discussion on the consultation paper on DTH issues here on Tuesday.
The panel sought views from DTH players, cable operators, channel representatives and other stakeholders on issues pertaining to new services, radio channels, tariff and other issues concerning DTH services.
Interacting with the media, Prabhakar said, “Although TRAI is a recommendatory body to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), it has a mandatory obligation in soliciting a general opinion before framing a regulation.” However, he said that TRAI, from the beginning, was of the opinion that retail tariff should be left under certain guidelines to the industry.
Speaking on new services on DTH platform,
Tata Sky MD and CEO Vikram Kaushik said, “We don’t want an island of isolation by preventing provision of fruits of modern technology to customers. , DTH providers are not doing anything new by providing services such as movie-on-demand, pay-per-view or other value added services.”
He said that the value added services fell within the purview of existing DTH licences as the providers were not crossing into a new technology to render the services, which otherwise could be termed as transgression or violation of existing licencing norms.
N P Singh from BIG
TV emphasised that up linking and down linking have lost significance, as vertical inter-access is possible under existing norms. However, he added that customer needs should be a priority and movie-on-demand was a mere up linking-down linking process.
New tariff rules for DTH services soon, says TRAI member