(12 September 2012 9:41 pm) 

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has negated the very concept of a basic service tier (BST) for a bouquet of free-to-air television (FTA) channels, by giving a “confusing and faulty” Tariff Order, an MSO counsel told Tdsat while arguing against the order.

The order says that a subscriber will be provided a BST of 100 free-to-air (FTA) channels at a fee of Rs 100 but goes on to add that "it shall be open to the subscriber to choose any combination of free to air channels up to 100 channels, in lieu of the BST offered by the multi-system operator."

This nullified the meaning of BST, counsel for MSO Delhi Distribution Company Navin Chawla, told Tdsat (Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal), which is hearing cases challenging the Trai Tariff Order of 30 April.

Chawla pointed out that the order also wants the BST offered by the MSO to include at least five channels of the each genre, namely news and current affairs, infotainment, sports, kids, music, lifestyle, movies and general entertainment in Hindi, English and regional language of the concerned region.

He argued that if five channels for every language was provided, then the number of channels with all the genres would easily cross 100.

He claimed Trai had done no study to find out whether an average viewer wanted 100 channels in the BST.

In any case, he said a similar order of 2007 had been challenged by the MSO Alliance and others before Tdsat, which had held that that the order had failed to specify tariffs and had only given a ceiling and slabs and that Trai needed to revisit the exercise to fix the tariffs in a holistic manner. Tdsat had also clearly stated that tariff meant the cost that the consumer has to pay.

Chawla said merely because the matter had gone in appeal before the Supreme Court which has ordered status quo till final disposal was no reason for Trai to commit the same flaw five years later. "Each word remains the same and we are back to square one," he claimed.

He said in any case, no formula for revenue sharing could be laid down unless all the beneficiaries were named. In this case, there had been no reference to the broadcaster and only the MSO and local cable operators (LCOs) had been named. Furthermore, he said a revenue sharing can only be talked about when a systematically worked out revenue figure is given.

He said Section 11(2) of the Trai Act 1997 stated: "The Authority may, from time to time, by order, notify in the Official Gazette the rates at which the telecommunication services within India and outside India shall be provided under this Act including the rates at which messages shall be transmitted to any country outside India".