TDSAT gives Sun TV a week to produce Madras HC stay order

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TDSAT gives Sun TV a week to produce Madras HC stay order

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal today gave Sun TV a week‘s time to produce before it the court stay order it states it has procured against TDSAT‘s directive that Sun stream its signals to DTH player TataSky.

The matter was heard on an application filed by TataSky requesting the sector tribunal to order a blacking out of Sun TV channels from all cable and DTH platforms for non-compliance with the TDSAT‘s orders passed on 19 March and 3 April.

While TataSky senior counsel Ramji Srinivas had filed the application yesterday, which came up for hearing today, Sun TV senior counsel Vivek Sibbal told the court that the appellant was quite aware that Sun TV had on 5 April procured a stay order from the Madras High Court on TDSAT‘s order.

 

TataSky has been misleading the tribunal, Sibbal argued.

TataSky has been demanding that if indeed the South Indian broadcast major had secured a stay, it needed to be produced, but that has not been done so far.

The tribunal, on hearing both parties, ordered Sun TV to place with it the order from the Madras HC within the next seven days.

The issue of the appeal would be now heard only once Sun produces the order.

 

From Chennai, Anil Kumar, legal head of Sun TV told indiantelevision.com: "We have not yet received the order copy from the court. Hopefully, we shall get it this evening and place it with TDSAT after that."

In the original case, TataSky had filed an appeal that Sun should stream its signals to the DTH platform on an a la carte basis in a non-discriminatory manner within the framework of the Trai Act.

The tribunal had issued an interim order on 19 March, saying Sun TV must stream the signals on the basis sought for and since the determination of price per channel has not been done by Trai, the court asked Sun in the interim to give the signals at 50 per cent of the price it charges cable operators.

TDSAT had discussed the issue of price at length, saying that cable TV (in non-Cas areas) is not an addressable system an under-declaration is massive, but DTH is addressable and broadcasters would get to know 100 per cent of who is viewing their channels.

On that ground, TDSAT felt that the charges should be much less for DTH than what the high price the broadcaster charges the cable operators to offset their losses, and had asked Trai to state what it intended to do about controlling tariff on the DTH platform.

In the meanwhile, TDSAT had said that till Trai files its reply on tariff, Sun may be asked to charge at 50 per cent of what it charges cable operators.

Sun had not complied with the 19 March order, and during the course of the 3 April hearing on the review application filed by it, the TDSAT judges went tough about non-compliance of interim orders. The tribunal then ordered Sun to stream the signals to TataSky latest by 6 April.