What Is Government's Aim - Digitising Cable Or Seeding STBs

With less than a month to go for the March 31 deadline for the second phase of the pan-India digitisation plan, more than half of the homes across 38 cities have now installed a digital set top box (STB), according to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting

“The 55 per cent digitisation target has been achieved in 38 cities that are set for digitisation by March 31,” a press release said. This is exactly the same way ministry had exaggerated its achievement in the last month of Phase-I. The question is what achievement the ministry wants to show, digitizing all Cable TV networks in these cities (which was the objective of the amended Cable TV Act) or just seed as many digital STBs. Expert feel that Cable and DTH are competing technologies and DTH started digital distribution in 2003 where as the new law is only meant for Cable TV Digitalisation. Also the ministry officials have all the time been stating that digitalisation of cable will protest cable operators from competition with DTH. If this is the case then ministry should count only the seeding of digital STBs in analogue cable homes to show the progress and not include the existing DTH connections and give a false impression to the media in their press releases.

According to data collected from direct-to-home (DTH) operators, a total of 87.7 lakh STBs had already been in Phase –II cities as of February 22. This is against the target of 1.60 crore STBs the Ministry had set.

“Out of a total of 87.7 lakh STBs, DTH connections accounted for 40.7 lakh and cable STBs accounted for 46 lakh,” the release said.

Provisional registrations had also been issued to 30 independent multisystem operators in a bid to speed up the process of cable TV digitisation but this action has been taken only a month before closing down Phase II giving advantage to national MSOs and DTH operators who have license to operate nationwide.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/digitization-news/item/1537-what-is-government-s-aim-digitising-cable-or-seeding-stbs.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/digitization-news/item/1537-what-is-government-s-aim-digitising-cable-or-seeding-stbs.html