NEW DELHI: With the pace of consumers entering into agreements with local cable operators (LCOs) moving at a snail‘s pace, the government has decided to launch an SMS campaign in order to sensitise Cable TV subscribers in Phase-I and Phase-II cities about the need to fill the consumer application form (CAF).

The consumers are required to fill the CAF in order to exercise their choice of channels and make the payment for the channels of their choice only.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry has been monitoring the availability of set top boxes (STBs) with the multi system operators (MSOs). Broadcasters are already running scrolls on TV channels to inform the public about the importance of filling CAF forms. MSOs are also giving messages on their local TV channels. Analogue signals have already been switched off by almost all the MSOs and digital signals are generally being encrypted.

As part of the process, over 80 fresh provisional registrations were issued to MSOs for operation in one or more cities of Phase-II, with the condition that they would operationalise their digital head-end before the cut-off date.

After technical inspection of all the concerned MSOs which showed some had not operationalised their set ups, the ministry issues 48 show cause notices, and cancelled the provisional registration of 15 defaulting MSOs.

The ministry has been consistently monitoring the progress made towards digitization during Phase II of the process. According to the data received from the MSOs and direct-to-home Operators, 22 cities have already achieved 100 per cent target of digitisation. Another 14 cities have shown considerable progress and the achievement remains less than 50 per cent only in Coimbatore and Vishakhapatanam.