Coming soon: Conditional access systems

Mumbai: Conditional access systems may be here sooner than one think. Bowing to cable operators demands, the Information & Broadcasting ministry has constituted a panel to discuss and recommend the necessity and modalities of introducing conditional access systems.

The panel, headed by the joint secretary, broadcasting, comprises AK Rastogi of All-India Aavishkar Dish Antenna Sangh, JS Kohli of the Cable Association of India, Rakesh Dutta of the Cable Networks Association, Jagi Panda of Ortel Communications, Prabhir K Bose of RPG Telecom, Praveen Awasthi of Siti Cable, Peter Mukherji of Star TV, Kunal Dasgupta of Sony, Sharad Kumar of Sun TV, Akhila Shivdas of Pushpa Grimaji and a nominee of the ministry of consumer affairs. Though no time frame has been set for the committee, it is expected to hand out its report at the earliest.

Conditional access system is a methodology that allows television viewers, through the use of a set-top box, to view and pay for only that channel or those channels they wish to view. This is unlike the system prevailing now that compels viewers to subscribe to a bouquet of channels.

Broadcasting companies, having gone pay, have fixed arbitrary charges for their channels, which are collected by them from cable operators who in turn charge their respective subscribers. Of late, there has been a tug-of-war between cable operators and broadcasting companies over the issue. While broadcasters have been blaming cable operators for grossly under-disclosing subscriber numbers, which results in loss of revenue to them, cable operators have accused broadcasters for thrusting even those channels up the throat of TV viewers under the garb of bouquet, which they do not want to view.

Since all major broadcasting companies like Zee, Sony and Star have gone pay, subscription charges have gone up steeply as far as television viewers are concerned. If conditional access system is introduced TV viewers, through cable operators, will view and pay for only that channel or those channels which they are interested in. This would not only solve the problem of viewers but also of broadcasting companies, as they will be able to ascertain the exact number of end-connectivity.

In all of this, there remains one major hurdle - which of the three would bear the cost of set top box, currently priced at around Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000. Whether it is the TV viewer, the cable operator or the broadcasting company? The panel is expected to consider and provide solution to this as also make suggestions on whether the set-top box should or should not remain an open architecture box. An open architecture box can be used for any or for all channels or bouquet of channels.