Encryption of DD signals requires major policy shift

New Delhi, Apr 15 (UNI) The move to encrypt Doordarshan signals has hit various roadblocks.

A major policy shift is required to encrypt DD signals, officials in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting told UNI.

The Committee on encryption of the signals has submitted its report to the government outlining various options and the requirements.

However, sources in the ministry said the report was more about difficulties that lie on the road to encryption.

The committee, headed by All India Radio Director General Brijeshwar Singh, was constituted in the wake of the controversy trigerred by Nimbus Communications, the BCCI rights holder, refusing to provide live feeds of cricket series to public broadcaster Prasar Bharati and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry slapping an ordinance forcing the sports broadcaster to do so.

The private broadcasters had contended that sharing live feed of sports events with the public broadcaster would lead to piracy.

Nimbus, Zee and ESPN etc had demanded that DD signals be encrypted as the public broadcaster had a vast reach in Asia.

The committee, which also had representatives from the BCCI and private broadcasters, was asked to find a way out to protect the signals from being pirated.

There are various complexities in the process. First, since the Prasar Bharati is a public broadcatser, Doordarshan channels are free to air by a mandate, so if their signals are restricted in any way like those of the pay channels, it would require a major policy shift, the sources said.

Moreover, there are 1400 low power transmitters, many of whom are unmanned and in order to introduce decoding and encryption they have to be manned.

Also, the cable operators will not get encrypted DD, as they have to show DD mandatorily. The DTH set top boxes do not have the encryption system, so a large number of DTH homes (over four millions) would have to change their STBs to get DD signals, they said.

The report of the committee will be placed infront of various stakeholders and experts but there were indications that the ministry might shelve the move, the sources said.

The Ministry is of the view that the refusal of the private brodcaster to share signals of sports events on the ground that DD signals were not encrypted was against the public interest.

It says by providing downlinking permission to private broadcasters, was helping them in widening their reach.

Under the revenue sharing arrangement, Prasar Bharati gets 25 per cent of the revenue and whereas remaining 75 per cent goes to a private broadcaster.

A private broadcaster can earn extra money by bringing in more advertisements.

There can't be a better arrangement than this, the ministry believes.

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