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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
Out of all the issues going on in the DTH industry of India, one of the platform issues has also snowballed into a big one. There has been a struggle going on between the broadcasters and the DTH service providers over the platform services for which the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had to intervene. Trai floated a consultation, a while back on which it invited comments from the industry stakeholders, and the consultation paper, along with the comments and the counter comments was available on the Trai official website. The title of the consultation paper was “Platform Services Offered by DTH Operators” and it was floated after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has sent a reference letter to the telecom regulator. There were many issues open for discussion in the consultation paper which were also taken up at an Open House organised by Trai. Some of these issues included whether or not the DTH operators should pay registration fees for the platform services and also the cap on the number of platform services allowed. With a new notification on this matter, Trai has shared its observations on the issue.
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Platform Services to Remain Exclusive to DTH Operators
The first thing that Trai has noted in its latest release is the definition of platform services which according to the ‘Regulatory Framework for Platform Services’ dated November 19, 2014 reads, “Platform services (PS) are programs transmitted by Distribution Platform Operators (DPOs)exclusively to their own subscribers and does not include Doordarshan channels and registered TV channels. PS shall not include foreign TV channels that are not registered in India.” Now it is worth noting that, one of the topics of discussion with Trai was that whether or not platform services would be exclusive to the DTH operator or whether it would be distributable like other broadcaster channels. To this, Trai has said that the platform services should be exclusive to the DTH operator.
