Trai's new tariff order for broadcasting sector will lessen monthly TV bill

With the Supreme Court (SC) clearing the decks for an implementation of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) new tariff order for the broadcasting sector, the prices for consumers to watch TV are expected to come down.

“We expect tariffs to come down substantially. There will be a fundamental shift in the entire framework bringing down the prices for TV consumers, who will now be able to subscribe to what they want rather than being forced to subscribe to a bundled package or what they don’t want,” Trai chairman R S Sharma told DNA Money.

“The SC order is a historic judgement. It will usher in transparency. It is a win for transparency and win for TV consumer’s choice,” he said.

As per the new tariff order by Trai, 100 free-to-air channels have to be offered at Rs 130 per month (excluding taxes) and rest a-la-carte.

The maximum retail price (MRP) of all the channels have to be clearly mentioned in the electronic programming guide and users can subscribe to the channels they want.It also mandates broadcasters to specify reference interconnect offer (RIO) detailing price, other terms and conditions to permit interconnection of another carrier to its network.

It is learnt that only Star India has not filed its RIO as it had challenged the Trai’s order in the apex court.

Under the new rules, a broadcaster cannot discriminate against any distributor and RIO offer has to be uniform to all distributors.

These rules apply to all broadcasting sectors, including direct-to-home (DTH) segment, cable industry and Internet Protocol television (IPTV).

This will also reduce litigations in the sector as most the issues are related to interconnect agreements between stakeholders, Sharma said.

The new tariff order by Trai mandates broadcasters to declare the MRP within 60 days and distribution platform operators to declare network capacity fee and distribution retail price (DRP) within 180 days.

“We have clearly prescribed timelines in the tariff order; there were benchmarks/milestones which were mentioned,” he said.

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“It was implemented, but not in the spirit of the order, as many broadcasters were uncertain about the outcome of the SC case,” he said, adding, “Now, that the SC has provided finality to it, the order will become operational in the true sense.”

Source: DNA Money