New rules for cableman

Published on: Aug 25, 2006, 08:56:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Missing a late night cricket match or a movie on television may become a thing of the past. The new regulation set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) makes it difficult for cable operators not to address complaints immediately. If the operator chooses to delay rectifying the fault, he will have to give a rebate in the monthly subscription charge to the consumer.

The new regulation notified by TRAI makes it mandatory for multi-service providers or cable operators to maintain a 24X7 complaint center. They will have to seek a satisfaction report from the subscribers once the complaint is redressed. On the lines of the redressal system of power companies in Delhi, the TRAI has also stipulated a time-bound complaint redressal system of 48 hours and a unique identification number for each consumer. Unlike the earlier system, the consumer will now get a cable connection after filing a form, which will have details of the maximum retail price of each channel, the channels offered, the complaint redressal system and information about other value-added services. The connection will have to be provided within two days.

Each complaint will have to be registered through an automatic recording machine and the consumer will have to be told by when the fault would be rectified. Though the new rule will initially apply to areas falling under the conditional access system (CAS) notification of the I&B ministry, officials say, a similar system would be later extended to others areas and direct-to-home connection.

The TRAI has also introduced a billing module for cable operators. The operators will have to issue monthly bills indicating details about service tax, registration number, entertainment tax and the status of earlier bills.

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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