It was almost 2 months since TRAI renotified the new rule for the cable and dth industry. As per the new rule, each and every cable and dth subscribers needs to be switched to the new scheme.
TRAI proposed the new system to be implemented by december 29th 2018 but later it was postponed to January 31st 2019. It is also cleared by a statement that the date will not be extended further. If the user failed to migrate to the new system will loss the channels after January 31st.
What is TRAI’s new rule ?
We wrote a detail article about the TRAI’s new rule for DTH and Cable TV, last month, however here we will make a brief about the new rule. TRAI’s new rule is mainly targeted to end the package based monopoly of the cable and dth providers. It will dispose all the existing package based subscription system and will implement a new per channel based subscription.
Read: What is TRAI’s New Rule for DTH and Cable TV Subscribers ?
As a result, each pay channels will have the same rate in all the DTH and Cable TV operators. Each and every subscribers will now have the power to select only needed channels and pay of those only. Now, users will not get any channels that they don’t like.
Subscribers will have the full right to add or remove any channels from their package and pay only those they want. The subscription charge for each users will be different now onwards since the choice of channels will be different for each. You can check, how the price is being calculated and how much you need to pay as a result of the new rule too.
How to get Pay Channel for Free ?
Initially TRAI made a statement saying, each users need to pay a basic price of Rs. 130/- plus GST. So the final rate will be Rs. 154/-. In this base price, users will get 100 free to air channels of their choice. In this 100 channels 24 channels are Doordarshan channels and remaining 76 depends on the user’s choice.
Read: How Much Needs to Pay for DTH and Cable With TRAI’s new Rule For DTH and Cable TV
This makes more confusion to the people thinking, the price will go very high since, with a price of Rs. 154/- users are getting free to air channels only. To get additional paid channels, users need to pay the respective amount of those channels.
Some channels are priced at Rs.19 where as some others available at Rs. 1 an even below that. If you are choosing those channels with high price, the total price will go high too. This made the rumors that, the overall cable tv and dth price will go higher after January 31st.
TRAI’s Amendment to the new Rule
Now, TRAI came with a new statement saying that with the base price of Rs. 154/- per month, users will get free as well as pay channels of their choice. User can choose free and paid channels of their choice within the base pack.
Similarly, user can choose additional free and paid channels after the base rate, with additional amount. However, it is not yet clear that how the ratio of paid and free channels is determined with the base Rs.154/- rate.
It is not clear how many pay channels can be selected, or if we select pay channels, the total number of available channels will go down etc. We think this doubts will get cleared in the next days. However, we can make sure that, with the base price, users will have the right to select free to air and pay channels together.
No more extension for the deadline
TRAI said again that, they will not extend the date from January 31st. Therefore all the users need to switch to the new scheme before that. Otherwise the channels will be stopped. So we recommend all the users to contact your respective DTH or Cable TV operator for the same.