Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

There’s no doubt that the new Trai broadcasting regime will help DTH and Cable TV operators in increasing their revenue and ARPU. With the new pricing scheme coming into effect from April 1, subscribers are being moved to Best Fit plans. That said, under the new Best Fit plan, subscribers are noticing higher TV bill than earlier, especially the Cable TV users. It’s already a known piece of news that DTH operators are way ahead of Cable TV service providers in terms of quality of service and even in the aspect of new tariff implementation. Due to the sub-par implementation of Trai’s tariff regime, a lot of Cable TV users in Kolkata city are migrating to DTH operators for a better quality of service and even more channel options.

Up to 25% Subscribers Churn Out of LCOs in Kolkata
It is worth noting that in Kolkata, many reports had surfaced about incidents where consumers were facing blacked out screens even after migrating to the new tariff regime. Also, some customers reported that the cable operators were not giving the choice of a-la-carte channels and were forcing them to go with the channel packs which pushed them to switch over to DTH operators. As a result, some of the cable operators in Kolkata reported having churned out 10-15% subscribers, while other operators stated churning out 20-25% subscribers. Cable operators, on the other hand, blamed the MSOs (Multi System Operators) for not conducting the migration process properly which led to this outcome. The cable operators said that the websites of MSOs were crashing, and the process was not smooth which led to consumers believing that the LCOs were to be blamed for the hassled migration process.