The Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2002 could not be passed by the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) today. The reason: lack of time.
It now appears likely that information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj, who has almost singelhandedly carried the bill this distance through Parliament, will push through the legislative change through an ordinance (executive order) after Parliament takes a break.

Tuesday‘s terrorist attack in the Jammu region of the strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir, which claimed 34 lives, and how the government should respond to it, took up the whole day‘s business. The debate on the issue was still going on when the house adjourned.

The amendments to the Act were passed in the Lok Sabha (Lower House) on Wednesday through a voice vote after a marathon discussion which lasted over three hours.

The meeting of cable TV operators to discuss issues around conditional access systems and the CATV Act which was to be held today (17 May) in Mumbai‘s Aarey Gardents has been postponed to next week.
Called by IndusInd Media vice-chairman Ram Hingorani last week, the meeting was rescheduled on the request of WinCable‘s Jagjit Singh Kohli and Hathway Cable & Datacom‘s K. Jayaraman who couldn‘t make it. The meeting is now slated to be held on 24 May.

Thai communication major Shin Satellite has reported consolidated revenues for the first quarter of 2002 of 1,303 million Baht, and EBITDA of 592 million baht. Total net profit for the quarter was 389 million Baht, a rise of 39 per cent from 279 million Baht in the first quarter of 2001. The company experienced a foreign exchange gain of 31 million Baht for the quarter.
Shin Satellite executive chairman Dr Dumrong Kasemset said, "Revenue from the transponder service business grew to 968 million Baht, and our Internet backbone business, called ProTrunk, played an important role in driving Ku-band utilisation up from 47% to 52%. Also noteworthy was the performance of Cambodia Shinawatra, a telecoms subsidiary in Cambodia, which achieved 240 per cent growth subscriber growth, mainly with prepaid customers, and lifted its revenue 23 per cent over the same period last year, to 134 million Baht."

Recent developments made by the company in broadband Internet technology, namely the iPSTAR system, have resulted in more orders coming for services, equipment and consequently more use of bandwidth on our satellites from international as well as domestic clients."

Ten Sports, which holds the telecast rights for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, looks like having a six-hour lead time over national broadcaster Doordarshan as far as airing the matches are concerned.
Ten Sports CEO Chris McDonald, while saying DD is in ongoing discussions with Ten Sports about taking highlights on a delayed basis, indicated the matches would be delayed by six hours or so.

Meanwhile, McDonald expressed confidence that Ten Sports distribution would be well in excess of 20 million homes by the time the World Cup kicks off on 31 May.