Cable goes to villages

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a new digital television signal delivery platform that can provide rural India a new version of cable operators and give some competition to Direct to Home (DTH), the only mode for watching non-terrestrial channels in rural parts.

Updated on: Nov 13, 2009, 24:28:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan

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The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a new digital television signal delivery platform that can provide rural India
a new version of cable operators and give some competition to Direct to Home (DTH), the only mode for watching
non-terrestrial channels in rural parts.

“The platform (Head-end In the Sky (HITS)) would bring down the cost of setting up cable operation from Rs 2 to 3 crore to Rs 3 lakh,” I&B Minister Ambika Soni said.

“It would mean that 60,000 cable operators could go digital with investment of just for Rs 1,200 crore by adopting HITS rather than investing Rs 15,000 under the conventional modes”.

As per the new policy, a registered cable operator can receive a digital signal directly from a licensee HITS operator through a satellite, unlike the present system, where he receives an analog signal through an optical fibre from a multi-service operator (MSO). This brings down the cost of setting up cable operation dramatically.

Of the total 75 million cable television homes in India, 90 per cent receive analog signal, which means picture quality one-tenth of the digital format.

Only half of India’s 225 million homes have a television set. While 90 million receive over 100 channels through cable operators and DTH, about 45 million homes get to watch only public broadcaster Doordarshan channels through its terrestrial network.

“HITS will provide young entrepreneurs in rural India an opportunity to start cable business at very low cost,” Soni said.
For consumers, it will mean extra cost. A signal received from a HITS operator cannot be directly viewed by consumers, as is the case with the analog signals.

“Each consumer will have to buy a set-top box (like one for availing DTH service) to encrypt the signal,” said Arvind Kumar, director in-charge of broadcast policy in the ministry. A cable operator can opt for HITS system and provide digital signal, with all services such as movie on demand as provided by the DTH service providers.

The ministry, however, estimates that the cost of the box will come down to Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 from the existing cost of over Rs 1,500 with the HITS getting popular.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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