Sunday, December 22, 2013

Arasu Cable and TRAI in legal fight

Arasu Cable TV Corp, which is a state-run player in Tamil Nadu, India, has gone to Madras High Court in order to restrain TRAI from interfering from the cable TV signal transmission in Chennai. TRAI has been actively trying to get the cable operators in the city to shift from analogue to digital TV signals but to no avail.
Tthe Arasu cable’s counsel during the hearing noted, “The Union government was well aware that nowhere in the world was a welfare measure of transmitting cable TV programmes at Rs70 available, and it was only due to political and commercial reasons prevailing in the state that it deliberately did not want to issue a DAS (digital addressable system) licence to the petitioner.”
While Chennai is technically one of the four cities that is part of Phase I of digitisation in India, that matter is still pending before the Madras High Court. Hence the MSOs in the city have been transmitting analogue signals while the other three cities have moved onto digital. The 38 cities part of Phase II of digitisation are also digitised currently. Most recently TRAI sent out notices to cable TV operators in Chennai to put digitisation into effect.

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