National Cable & Telecommunications Association

Email: mail@ncta.info Fax: 9111692 2347 Website: www.ncta.info How correct is the assertion of broadcasters that there are about 38 million cable homes in India today? This assertion stands riddled with bundle of questions beginning with the purpose behind making it. A cable TV service subscriber and a provider have neither any control over such assertion nor can directly gain out of it .Who may be benefited by it and how? There are issues that require thinking and cannot be ignored before accepting or rejecting the concrete figure of 38 million cable homes. At the outset, the basis of arriving at a concrete figure of 38 million cable homes, remain undisclosed and unexplained by the broadcasters. What percent of this 38 million cable home are distributed in rural and urban India? What percent of the cable subscribers are in metros, cities, towns and villages? How many viewers are watching all the pay channels like the Star World, Star Movies, NGC, StarGold, Zee English, Zee MGM, Zee Cinema, AXN, Channel V, CNN, HallMark, CNBC, Nickelodeon, HBO and the sports channels like DD Sports, Star Sports and ESPN, while there is no cricket series? Distribution data on B/W TV sets to Color TV sets and that to Cable TV ready TV sets in these 38 million C&S Homes? Till date, there is neither any data available nor any systematic and coordinated effort undertaken by the broadcasters or Governmental and Non Governmental organizations to slowly build up a database, which could have helped to answer such questions. In the absence of any data base, the broadcasters interestingly allege on the one hand that there are about 38 million cable homes in India and on the other the cable service providers by under invoicing only enable them to collect revenue from 6 million cable homes .The stand taken by the broadcasters is to act as double edged sword to tackle its revenue collection from the advertisers on the one hand and to pressurize the cable TV service providers to dance to their tunes. The main source of revenue for the broadcasters is not from the cable service subscription but advertisements. The advertisers are certainly impressed and swayed by the assertion of the broadcasters that there are 38 million cable homes today in India. Higher the projection in the number of cable subscribers better is the broadcaster placed vis- a vis the advertisers to charge from them. The allegation of the broadcasters that the cable TV service providers are under invoicing or under declaring their number of subscribers is to pressurize them to accede to their demands of increase in pay channels subscription rates, connectivity and their policy to force the cable TV service providers to accept the bouquets/ package of their channels. F or instance, the complete Star channels bouquet is now priced at Rs. 40 .50 paisa per subscriber per month. In case, a service provider desires to receive and subscribe to only the Star Plus Channels from the bouquet, he has to pay Rs. 37.00 /- per subscriber per month. This means that the remaining pay channels in the bouquet is only for Rs.3.50 paisa per subscriber per month. However, the pay channel broadcaster does not permit the cable TV service provider to receive and subscribe to the remaining channels only by paying Rs. 3.50 paisa per subscriber per month. The cable TV service provider is forced by the broadcaster to receive and subscribe to all the Star Channels from the bouquet. Moreover, the broadcaster deliberately by alleging under declaration in subscriber base by a cable TV service provider turns a blind eye towards the maintenance, up gradation, infrastructure, Entertainment Tax and other recurring expenses incurred by the Cable TV service providers. Resultingly, there is no scope left for the cable TV service providers to upgrade their infrastructure to the detriment of an end viewer.
For any comment or further clarification to this, please Email: VIKKI CHOUDHRY - President -NCTA vikki@ncta.info or vikki@homecable.net
NCTA Regd. Office: 19 CSC (DDA) Sukhdev Vihar, New Delhi 1100 25 [INDIA]