CAS: People in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai still undecided

New Delhi, Jan 4 (UNI) Four days into the Conditional Access System(CAS) regime, a large number of families in the notified areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are still undecided about the installation of set top boxes for viewing pay channels which beam entertainment and sports programme.

Those who have chosen to have STBs are not able to get it in the market as they decided only at the last moments when the stock had run out.

Despite all the government publicity about the impending new system, most of the families realised the shape of things only after CAS was in place, so they will take sometime to decide, feel industry analysts.

There are still some areas where the cable operators are giving all the pay channels, which has become illegal under Section 4(A) of Cable Act after December 31. An Information and Brodcasting Ministry official said the state government officials were inquiring into such complaints and after a few days things will settle down as ultimately everybody has to fall in line with the law.

The Multi-Service Operators(MSOs), who have imported STBs from foreign countries, are waiting for their consignments to arrive. The arrival has been delayed due to the disruption in air traffic caused by fog, says Mr Jawahar Goyal, vice-chairman of the Essel Group which is both in the DTH and cable business.

He said things will stabilise after some time.

''After all the analogue system which has been in place for the last 14 years cannot be completely disamantled within 14 hours,'' said Mr Goyal, adding so far, three and a half lakh STBs had been installed in the notified areas of three metroes.

''We have ordered more STBs from Korea, but the arrival has been delayed due to delay in flights,'' he said.

A large number of families, especially those who have more than one TV set, are considering the DTH option too, and some prefering to wait in the hope that gradually the private broadacster will make more and and more pay channels free to air.

A cable operator in Jamia area said that he was receiving very little number of requests for installing set top boxes.

The monthly bill that used to cost around Rs 250 in areas of south Delhi, is now slated to come between Rs 120 to Rs 135 with only free to air channels( Rs 77 as basic fixed charges+ service tax and copyright fees).

The new system, which is a digital mode of transmitting TV channels through a set-top box (STB) started working in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata from the night of December 31.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan dasmunsi today said they will review the working of CAS after sometime and then take decision about its extension to other areas of the three metroes.

The system is already in place in Chennai.

In the CAS regime, the transmission signals are encrypted and viewers need a set-top box to receive and decrypt the signal. The STB is required to watch only pay channels, not free-to-air channels. While most of the entertainment and sports channels are to be paid for, almost all the news channels are free like Doordarshan.

UNI