The new Trai rule for the Indian TV viewers has created a major stir in the DTH sector of the country. According to the new Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) rule, Indian TV viewers will now able to choose the channels they want to watch and just pay for them unlike before. The new rule will be implemented February 1 onwards. Ahead of that, the DTH service provider D2h India has announced new news. D2h has announced support for several Star India channels for the platform. To reinform previously D2h didn’t support channels from Star India. This move has definitely come into effect as the date for the new Trai rule moves closer to the implementation date.
Controversy Going on Between DTH Operators and Star India
To brush up the past, D2h DTH operator pretty much similar to its competitors like Sun Direct had previously didn’t include any channels from Star India in any of its supported broadcaster packs. This made way to a lot of problems and tension between Star and DTH operators that didn’t support their channels. The channel and the DTH service provider have come into a mutual understanding as the new Trai rule will come into effect soon, on February 1.
What's the New Trai DTH Tariff Rule?
According to the new Trai rule, all DTH service providers from Feb 1 onwards will need to sell channels and also packs only in retail prices that are set by the channel owners. In fact with the new Trai rule, Indian TV viewers will now need to pay only for the channels they want to watch which in turn will make TV viewing cheaper in the country. Already, DTH and Cable TV operators announced their new channel packs and prices based on the new tariff rule.
A lot has happened in the DTH sector of India in the last month. Most of the operators have priced their individual channels extremely high and hence to make it cost effective for the TV viewers in India the broadcasters are creating packages. This is building tension among the DTH and cable service providers as they will no longer able to support the genre or language-based packs that they used to offer to the users before. To vent out the frustration, the DTH companies decided to refuse to support the packages created by broadcasters like packages from Sony and Star India were rejected to be supported by DTH operators like D2h and Sun Direct.
But now, with the new news coming from Ultra News, it looks like D2h and Star India has come to a negotiated settlement. D2h will now support packages created by Star. Other DTH service providers might support Star India packages before the Trai rule comes out.
