India draws closer to full cable TV digitisation


Details

Rebecca Hawkes

| 11 December 2015




The Indian Government has earmarked INR130.2 billion to ensure the final two phases of the nationwide programme of cable TV digitisation are completed.


Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore told Parliament that the Mission Digitisation scheme included INR10 million to be spent on management information system (MIS) software.

The 31 December 2015 deadline for phase III of the programme should see all the remaining analogue networks in India’s urban areas switch to digital addressable system (DAS) for cable TV. After this date, no analogue signal transmission or re-transmission of analogue TV channels in urban areas is permitted.

It follows the conversion to DAS in the four Metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai at the end of October 2012, and cable networks in the 38 cities with a population more than one million going digital by the end of March 2013.

The deadline for the complete digitisation of India’s vast cable TV infrastructure is 31 December 2016.

Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore said a task force has been established to steer the digitisation process during the remaining two phases.

The news comes after a meeting on 1 December between the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and major stakeholders in the broadcasting and cable TV sector, regarding the implementation of DAS in phase III areas. TRAI said the progress of seeding set-top boxes in these areas is satisfactory and strong numbers of customers are now receiving the benefits of digital TV.

Broadcasters, direct-to-home (DTH) satellite operators and multi-system operators (MSOs) have been instructed to conduct “exhaustive” consumer awareness campaigns to ensure the remaining customers in urban areas can install STBs before the analogue cut off date at the end of this year.