NEW DELHI: The scepticism surrounding digitisation figures notwithstanding, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Friday claimed that the digital cable penetration has increased to 81 per cent up from 77 per cent that it had announced earlier this month.

The MIB said that the digitisation penetration will be 87 per cent if the progress made by DTH is also taken into account. The DTH operators have informed MIB that 2.7 million set-top boxes (STBs) have been installed in the four metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

As per the data provided by MSOs, currently about 45,000 STBs are being installed per day to meet the deadline for first phase of digitisation.

The MIB said that Mumbai has been completely digitised with the digital cable penetration standing at 100 per cent. Kolkata has achieved 78 per cent digitisation in cable alone. With DTH, the percentage of digitisation in Kolkata has gone up to 81 per cent.

In Delhi the digitisation percentage of digital cable penetration is 74 per cent and with DTH it has gone up to 81 per cent while Chennai has refused to show any major improvement with only 60 per cent cable digitisation which goes up to 85 per cent with DTH.

The MIB had launched an aggressive campaign in the Electronic and Print Media to take awareness to the door steps of people. The promotional steps include print advertisements in local newspapers, SMS messages, spots on all TV and radio channels started by the Ministry to inform people about the urgency to get STBs.