The rates of cable services or DTH services may get costly after a new regulation to be effective from January 1, 2019.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) new tariff order provides the consumers with the opportunity to select the channels they want and do not want to watch.
With this regulation, consumers will have the choice of selecting channels at the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) set by the respective broadcasters, following the a-la-carte approach in the TeleVision network. This approach simply provides the ability to ‘pick and pay’.
According to Economic Times (ET), a rough calculation has shown that a consumer will have to pay ₹430-440 per month for the basic Hindi channels, excluding the regional or sports channels.
TRAI shows, four metros fall under phase I, phase II consists of more than 10 lakhs populations, towns with more than 1 lakh people come under phase III, and below that are phase IV towns.
Currently, phase III and IV towns are paying about ₹200-250 for the cable services, whereas, in large cities, people pay as much as ₹350-400 to their cable operators.
Vivekanand Subbaraman, an analyst at Ambit Capital, said, “One can expect Phase I/II subscribers to pay more but convincing price sensitive Phase III/IV subscribers to cough extra for TV services, who are currently paying Rs 200-250 per month, will be a challenge.”
After the new regime, customers will have to pay ₹130, excluding taxes, as a base price wherein they will get 100 channels, which would be free-to-air channels (FTA), not including the popular ones. In addition to that, an extra network capacity fee of ₹100 would be charged (₹25 for 20 channels).
Channel bouquets will cost about ₹450, while a-la-carte will cost as high as ₹800 per month. Bouquets will be costing less as they are discounted at 35-55 percent.
With this new regulation, TRAI’s intention is to make the cable framework more transparent and provide the consumers with the option of choosing the channels they wish to watch and be charged for the same, and not for the channels they do not watch.
RS Sharma, chairman of TRAI, told ET in an earlier interaction that customers should get the choice to select whatever channels they want and no channel should be shoved down the throat of the customer.
The broadcasters have kept the rate of popular channels between ₹15-19, as long as there is no cap on discounting of bouquets.
“We are less than 15 days away from implementing the change and still consumers are not aware of this major change. Nobody knows what will happen on January 1. If there is a blackout given that cable and DTH operators are yet to get consumers’ choice of channels, brace for consumer anarchy this new year,” said a top executive of a broadcast network.