Tata Sky bows to India’s new channel pricing regulations
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 28 January 2019

Indian direct-to-home (DTH) TV platform Tata Sky has agreed, a week before deadline, to comply with regulatory requirements to publish channel pricing and to enable subscribers to select them on an à la carte basis.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s new regulations came into force on 29 December 2018. The distribution platform operators (DPOs) were allowed an extra month to migrate their customers to the new pricing regime beginning on 1 February.

In a statement, the DTH operator said it is confident it can smoothly implement the transition to full customer choice in one week.

“Tata Sky has always been compliant to regulatory requirements. We have gone live with our modes of communication across the Tata Sky website, Tata Sky Mobile App and also equipped the dealers that subscribers can reach out to,” said Harit Nagpal, managing director and CEO, Tata Sky.

“We have ensured that choosing channels and packs is as easy as steps 1,2,3 for any subscriber,”

The move came after TRAI ruled out another extension to the deadline, stating that 40% of TV consumers have exercised their options under the new regime.

The regulator had also assured subscribers that “all efforts are being made to ensure that there is no inconvenience or any disruption of TV services due to the migration to the new regulatory regime”.

Rival DTH platforms Airtel Digital TV and Dish TV had published their individual channel pricing earlier in January, along with multi system operators such as Den Networks, Hathway Cable & Datacom and Siti Cable.

Tata Sky had been challenging TRAI’s tariff order, interconnection regulation and quality of service (QoS) regulation in the Delhi High Court.