TRAI may soon seek views to cut TV subscription tariffs, say sources
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India plans to soon come out with a consultation paper aimed at reducing television subscription costs, a source at the regulator said.
The likely move follows new tariff regulations for the broadcast sector, which came into effect in February, and due to which the regulator has faced criticism over a rise in television tariff.
“There has been criticism over the rise in television tariff and the fall in the number of channels. The consultation paper plans to look at ways to solve it,” the source said.
Implementation of the new tariff norms has reportedly led to a rise in subscription cost, but the regulator had so far maintained that tariff would come down if customers choose their channels judiciously, instead of choosing large bouquets offered under the old norms.
According to the new framework, consumers can choose to pay for channels of their choice on an ‘a-la-carte’ basis or in form of bouquets made by broadcasters as well as distributors.
The new framework prevents cable distributors from charging for free-to-air channels, and all pay channels clubbed in a bouquet are priced at Rs 19 for ‘a-la-carte’.
The regulator has also allowed service providers to charge network capacity fee of Rs 130 per month, excluding taxes, for the first 100 channels, and an additional Rs 20 for every slab of 25 channels.
In another news, telecom players mounted a blistering attack on Over the Top (OTT) service providers like WhatsApp and Facebook, arguing that competing OTTs should be subject to same stringent safeguards as telcos, especially on lawful interception and data localisation aspects.
OTT services refer to applications and services that are accessible over the Internet and ride on an operator's network. Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook and Hike are some of the popular and widely-used OTT services.
Telecom operators asserted that some of the popular OTTs offering voice and messaging services are "perfect substitutes" to services provided by telcos and hence need to be regulated to avoid an imbalance in the sector.