TRAI teams in CAS cities to study situation

New Delhi, Jan 8 (UNI) The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) today despatched two senior officials to Kolkata and Mumabi to study the complaints regarding the recently introduced Conditional Access System(CAS).

TRAI adviser Rakesh Kakkar told UNI there have been various reports in media about consumers not being able to get Set Top Boxes(STBs) which are required to view all the pay channels under CAS.

He said the officials will study the situation there and report back soon.

Mr Kakkar said the problem has arisen perhaps because majorty of people decided only at the last moment to acquire STBs.

''Installatioin of a STB takes about half an hour, and a team cannot install more than 15 to 20 STBs in a working day, so many consumers might have been left unattended despite the STBs being there,'' said another TRAI official.

Despite all the government publicity about the impending new system, most of the families acted only when the cable operators stopped beaming the pay channels.

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

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi has 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, majority of news channels are free, like Doordarshan.

UNI