Govt Allows Grace Period Of 15 Days

Government is going slow on blanking out analogue cable TV screens as about 25 percent of 1.6 crore households missed the deadline of switching over to digitised cable television on April 1.

Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma said, "In order not to create inconvenience for the people, we are giving a transition time of 10 to 15 days depending on the ground-level situation.” He, however, added that there was no question of the deadline being extended by the government.

As per the ministry's data, 1.6 crore cable TV houses had to be digitised by April 1.Seven of the 38 selected cities--Ludhiana, Hyderabad, Faridabad, Allahabad, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Jodhpur--have reported 100 percent digitisation while Thane, Meerut and Jaipur have reported over 90 percent compliance. Till April 1, Vishakhapatnam which has over 5 lakh TV sets, reported minimum figures of 12.18 percent digital TV sets. Other cities like Srinagar (20 percent), Coimbatore (28.89 percent), Jabalpur (34.87 percent), Kalyan Dombivli (38.59 percent) were also lagging behind.

The Jabalpur figure was low as supply of STBs was less compared to the demand while political developments had some effect on STB installation drive in Srinagar.

The four cities of Gujarat - Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodra - along with Bangalore got an extension of the digitisation date following court orders. These cities require over 15 lakh STBs to installed but currently have more time before the government can enforce digitisation.

As per ministry figures, by April 1, Ghaziabad, Aurangabad, Nashik, Pune, Sholapur had crossed 80 percent figures while Ranchi, Varanasi, Kanpur, Bangalore and Indore over 70 percent. Vadodra, Lucknow, Nagpur and Bhopal had reported figures above 60 percent. Agra, Navi Mumbai, Howrah, Surat, Mysore and Ahmedabad had crossed the halfway mark while Patna, Pimpri Chinchwad and Rajkot were just below the 50 percent mark.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/digitization-news/item/2086-govt-allows-grace-period-of-15-days.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/digitization-news/item/2086-govt-allows-grace-period-of-15-days.html