NEW DELHI: Communications sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has begun cracking the whip on service providers found in violation of its new tariff order for the television sector. After having pulled up Bharti Telemedia-owned Airtel Digital TV for not complying with the new guidelines on Tuesday last week, TRAI followed the move by sending notices to direct to home (DTH) service provider Dish TV which owns the D2H DTH service.
According to TRAI, its inspections found that all named operators were in violation of the newly instituted New Tariff Order, which came into effect last month. “The said DTH operator is forcefully offering a bouquet of free-to-air channels with no choice to subscribers and without their consent. This is in addition to the channels opted by the subscribers and the following message is being displayed - This is a free to air bouquet at no extra charge. If you have selected any pay channel, then this bouquet will not impact your network capacity fee (NCF),” TRAI noted in its notice to Dish TV. It also said that consumers have complained that they were not able to contact Dish TV and D2H customer care.
The Dish TV and D2H platforms have been given five days to rectify the lapses. Under TRAI’s new tariff order, all cable and DTH companies are mandated to offer consumers full flexibility in choosing and paying for the channels they wish to see. This may be as part of a broadcaster pack, a curated pack or as individual (a-la-carte) channels. Customers will only pay for the channels they chose, on top of the basic network capacity fee fixed at `130 per month plus taxes for the first 100 channels. According to the rules, the DTH or cable operator cannot automatically activate a channel for a user without their consent.
TRAI’s notice to Airtel Digital TV had also been similar, with the regulator finding that the company was “forcefully offering a bouquet of free-to-air channels with no choice to subscribers, without their consent and with no additional NCF. This is in addition to the channels opted by the subscribers.” It also said Airtel Digital TV users too have raised complaints on being unable to contact the customer care centre to get their packages in place.
TRAI noted that the platform had also offered more channels than its users had opted for through subscription packs. Airtel Digital TV had also been given five days to rectify these lapses by the regulator.