ITV

Tag: Patrick Raju

  • HC stays DAS rollout in Ahmedabad; other Phase II cities to follow?

    HC stays DAS rollout in Ahmedabad; other Phase II cities to follow?

    NEW DELHI: Ahmedabad can wait for DAS. That was the decision of the Gujarat High Court which stayed the switching off of analogue signals to beyond 31 March because of the non-availability of digital settop boxes.

    The High Court said Ahmedabadis will have till 9 April for the introduction of digital STBs following a petition filed by Cable Operators Association of Gujarat through its President Pramod Pandya. He said that STBs ordered from China had failed to arrive because of internal problems in that country and therefore the LCOs could not be penalised for this.

    An Information and Broadcasting ministry official confirmed the development in Ahmedabad.

    Sources, however, reveal that a stay on the rollout of DAS had also been granted by the Karnataka High Court till 1 April in Bangalore and Mysore following petitions filed by Karnataka Cable TV Operators Association President V S Patrick Raju and Mysore Cable TV Operators Association.
    However, no confirmation of this development was available to Indiantelevision.com till the time of filing this report.

    Meanwhile, Raju had earlier also raised the issue of who owns the STB that is installed at the home of a subscriber – the customer or the LCO. He had said that there was no clarity over who owns the box.

    “We have also not given any commitment to exchange the box if the customer so wants. In most cases, we are also unable to give the bill for the box as the Multi System Operators (MSOs), which are distributing them, are not giving us any bill. All that is given is the activation bill,” Raju told Indiantelevision.com over the phone from Bangalore.

    However, he said bills are being given to customers who are serviced directly by the MSOs.

  • LCOs in Bangalore hold black flag demonstration to protest DAS deadline for 2nd phase

    LCOs in Bangalore hold black flag demonstration to protest DAS deadline for 2nd phase

    NEW DELHI: Cable TV operators from Bangalore and Mysore staged a black flag protest here to oppose the deadline for the second phase of digitisation on 31 March which will cover these cities.

    The protest was held outside the venue of a seminar on the Digital Addressable System (DAS) here.

    Operators associations demanded that the 31 March deadline be extended. The members of the Karnataka State Cable TV Operators Association submitted a memorandum to Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s Technical Advisor Yogendra Pal who also participated in the seminar.

    Their demands included extension of the deadline, changing the revenue-share model with multi-system operators (MSOs) prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and evolution of a licensing frame for local cable operators (LCOs).

    Association President Patrick Raju said the deadline was not feasible and demanded to know the status of implementation in the metros. Countering Pal‘s claim that digitisation was total in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, Raju said the situation on the ground was different.
     
    “Let them set it right there, carry out an honest assessment and then start the next phase. This is being done in haste without consulting us, who are the major stakeholders,” he said.

    Meanwhile, Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that around 47 per cent of consumers in Bangalore and 38 per cent in Mysore had already taken new digital set-top boxes. The sources claimed that MSOs in the two cities had adequate number of STBs.