Thaindian News

Chennai, Feb 15 (IANS) Direct-to-Home (DTH) broadcaster Tata Sky is gearing up to meet the demand for new connections that would come up from the four metros following digitisation of cable TV networks from July 1.

Households in the four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata — will have to switch to digital TV before June 30 as the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has mandated nationwide cable digitisation as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Vikram Mehra, chief marketing officer, said Tata Sky has enough set-top boxes to cater to the expected demand.

“We are training sufficient number of people in installing the set-top boxes as well as the call centre employees,” he told reporters here Wednesday.

He said Tata Sky has a set-top box at Rs.1,000 offering interactive features.

Around 90 million television signals in India will have to be converted in four phases and the second phase will be for 38 cities in 2013 as per the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Bill 2011.

Mehra said digital cable transmission and DTH started at the same time seven years back but while the former has around seven million subscriber base only, DTH players have around 45 million subscribers.

According to him, the analogue cable TV connections will be around 10 million in these four metros.

“Post-digitisation, there will not be under-declaration of subscribers by the cable operators. Hence the government would gain in terms of tax revenue and broadcasters would also gain in terms of increased revenue,” Mehra said.