Cable operators charging excess fees on CAS

New Delhi, Jan 4: Delhi's Former Chief Secretary Omesh Saigal today sent a memorandum to TRAI Chairman Nripendra Mishra saying that cable operators in South Delhi are charging fees in excess to what was stipulated by the regulator.

Conditional access system (CAS) was rolled out in South Delhi from January 1.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had issued instructions through a notification in August 2006 and then in an advertisement in December, fixing the charge for free-to-air channels as Rs 77 (excluding taxes) per month per subscriber while an individual pay-channel was to attract Rs 5 (plus taxes) per month per subscriber.

The notification and ad were silent as to how many television sets a subscriber can have.

In the memorandum to the TRAI Chairman, Mr Saigal said, ''Since the ad fails to give the definition of the subscriber, it has given leverage to cable operators to charge fees way above what have been allowed by you.'' He contended that a cable operator should be allowed to charge for the channel only once from a subscriber, even if he has more than one television set.

Mr Saigal also pointed out the loss to consumers as they will have to pay even for those channels which make profits by telecasting ads. ''This is clearly an unfair trade practice as defined in the Consumer Protection Act,'' the memorandum added.

UNI