NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting Ministry has commenced a series of meetings with cable operators, MSOs and other stakeholders as part of the process to firm up the dates of digitisation, following the report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India putting the sunset date at June 2014 in place of March 2015.
Additional Secretary Rajiv Takru, Joint Secretary Arvind Kumar, and Deputy Secretary KS Rejimohan took the meeting where the cable operators and multi-system operators (MSOs) gave their points of view.
Those who attended included MSO Alliance presidemt Ashok Mansukhani, Cable Operators Federation of India (COFI) president Roop Sharma, Digicable north regional head Anil Malhotra, and Den Networks president SN Sharma among others.
There may be some more meetings with stakeholders before the Ministry firms up its views on the sunset date for digitisation.
In its response to the Government’s suggestions to Trai’s earlier report, the regulator had suggested the four metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai should shift to digital by 31 December this year. For cities which have a population of over one million, it has suggested December 2012 as the timeline.
The I&B Ministry had raised concerns over lack of availability of large numbers of set-top-boxes that are required to receive digital cable signals and proposed a longer period to allow cable operators to shift to the new system.
