TRAI amends existing interconnection regulation for DTH service

New Delhi, Sept 3 (UNI) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today issued the fourth ammendment to the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection Regulation, 2007, which essentially covers regulatory provisions on interconnection issues relating to DTH services.

The amendments will take effect from December 1, 2007 and every broadcaster will publish, within 90 days of these amendments taking effect, its reference interconnect offer (RIO) for the DTH operators containing technical and commercial terms for interconnection, said a statement.

Such RIO, Trai said, will contain details like rates of channels and bouquets, details of discounts, payment terms, security and anti-piracy requirements, subscriber base reports and audit, tenure of agreement, and termination of agreement etc.

Trai has said the RIO will be published on the broadcaster's website and also communicated to each DTH operator.

RIOs existing, if any, prior to these regulations will be modified to conform to the RIO now published under these regulations, Trai added.

The Trai regulation says that if a DTH operator makes a request to a broadcaster to enter into an interconnection agreement based on the published RIO, then the broadcaster will be obliged to do so within 45 days of the request.

Trai has, however, left it to the broadcasters and DTH operators to enter into mutual agreements on non-discriminatory basis by deviating from the RIO.

If the broadcaster and the DTH operator fail to enter into an interconnection agreement after negotiations, then both of them may jointly request Trai to facilitate in arriving at an agreement.

All broadcasters will compulsorily offer all their channels on a-la-carte basis to DTH operators.

Additionally, they may also offer bouquets, but they cannot compel any DTH operator to include the entire bouquet in any package being offered by the operators to their subscribers, the regulation said.

In case a DTH operator includes various pay channels of a broadcaster's bouquet in different DTH packages for its subscribers, then the payment for the bouquet will be made by the DTH operator to the broadcaster based on the highest subscriber base for any pay channel from that bouquet.

The a-la-carte rates of pay channels and the rates of the bouquets offered by the broadcasters to DTH operators shall be so related that the sum of a-la-carte rates of pay channels in a bouquet does not exceed 1.5 times the bouquet rate and no a-la-carte rate of a pay channel in a bouquet will be more than three times the average pay channel rate of that bouquet.

Trai says it will have the power to intervene and ask any broadcaster to modify its published RIO, on grounds of protecting the interests of consumers or service providers, orderly growth of the sector, or for not being in conformity with these regulations.

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