MUMBAI: Tamil Nadu’s giant multi system operator (MSO) Arasu cable is flexing its muscles again. Last week, it issued a public notice against aggregator MediaPro for breach of letter of acceptance and non conclusion of price negotiation. Now it has gone ahead and issued a notice against Star Sports citing the same reason.
The notice dated 28 December warns subscribers that after 21 days they won’t be able to view Star Sports channels on their Arasu cable connections but instead will be shown substitute channels.
Issued under section 4.2 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) Telecommunications (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection Regulations 2004, the notice says that Star Sports 1, 2, 3 and 4 might be disconnected.
A few days ago, the Madras High Court warned the TRAI not to take any coercive action against the MSO that has about six million subscribers in the state. The rumours doing the rounds are that Arasu has been arm twisting pay channels to pay high carriage fees in order to fill in the gap between revenue and payouts to pay channels of about 40 per cent.
