TRAI, which is the regulator for the carriage side of broadcasting along with the telecom sector, may be in favour of a voluntary roll out of CAS, rather than making it mandatory.
NEW DELHI: The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to conduct a feasibility study on whether conditional access system (CAS) can be extended to other parts of the country, it is learnt.
TRAI, which is the regulator for the carriage side of broadcasting along with the telecom sector, may be in favour of a voluntary roll out of CAS, rather than making it mandatory.
Beginning this year, I&B minister PR Dasmunsi had said that CAS may be introduced in other parts of the metros shortly. CAS is all about accessing the channels of your choice and paying only for them. Dasmunsi had indicated that along with the metros, CAS could be introduced in cities like Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Bangalore.
CAS was made mandatory in certain parts of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata from December 31, 2006. That is, without set-top boxes, a cable TV viewer in these specified areas cannot access the pay channels, for which the ceiling tariff of Rs 5 each has been set by TRAI. Chennai was the only city to have CAS before that. In Chennai, CAS was launched in 2003.
With the rollout of mandatory CAS in some parts of three metros, direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting witnessed a boom. Already, there are three DTH platforms in the country and a couple of more are expected to be launched soon. Nevertheless, Dasmunsi considers the first phase of CAS a success.
According to the data supplied by the I&B ministry in January end, around 3.8 lakh set-top boxes had been supplied for CAS across Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. At that point, Mumbai had the maximum number of CAS homes accessing pay channels, at 1.78 lakh, followed by 1.6 lakh in Delhi and only 41,522 in Kolkata.
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