MUMBAI: Amidst allegations of fudged figures on digitisation penetration, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Wednesday said that the cable television digitisation in the four metros has increased to 77 per cent twenty days before the deadline for shutting down analogue signal.
The digitisation penetration in the four metros according to MIB is 99 per cent in Mumbai, followed by 73 per cent in Kolkata, 66 per cent in Delhi and 59 per cent in Chennai.
The MIB said the digitisation penetration will go up to 84 per cent in the four metros if the cable TV and direct-to-home penetration is taken into account.
The figure was based on data provided by multi-system operators (MSOs) and direct-to-home (DTH) and data derived from 2011 Census. The MIB said that during the initial stage of planning the data was collated based on the information supplied by the MSOs.
The ministry observed that there were grave discrepancies in data provided, particularly number of cable TV subscribers in four metro cities as it did not present the true picture largely due to duplication of cable connections. It also said that the data did not reflect the numbers vis-? -vis service and entertainment tax collection.
"In view of the given discrepancy, the Ministry has under taken the exercise to base the data Census of India 2011, released by Office of Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. This data has authentic figures relating to households and TV penetration in four metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai," the MIB said in a statement.
City wise data for Metro Cities can be seen in the Table below:
To buttress its point of using census data to calculate digitisation penetration, the MIB said that the census data has been widely used both Government and non Government agencies for planning and policy purposes as data collection is done by house to house survey by an impartial body.
As per the data released by MIB on the basis of census figures, 1.86 million STBs have been installed with set-top boxes out of 2.24 million TV households in the city. Out of the 2.24 million TV households, there are 1.54 million cable TV homes and 0.7 million DTH homes.
In Delhi, 1.58 million STBs have been installed out of 1.99 million cable TV subscribers. Kolkata with 2.02 million cable TV subscribers has seen installation of 1.47 million STBs while Chennai with 0.43 million cable TV subscribers has seen installation of 0.25 million STBs.
