The services may be available on a largescale basis by year-end

The I&B ministry decides to amend existing broadcast guidelines to include those for IPTV and the television on your mobile phone called mobile TV, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 5, 2008, 02:59:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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TV viewing is all set to go mobile. The I&B ministry has decided to amend existing broadcast guidelines to include those for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and the television on your mobile phone called mobile TV.

The new guidelines may be notified in four months. The services may be available on a large-scale basis by year-end.

“By amending guidelines, we can meet the demand of the new India. It would also be a big boost to TV viewing in India,” said a senior I&B official. The exercise is part of the regime to cover the whole of India under digital television by 2015.

The ministry recently gave an ‘in principle’ approval to the TRAI proposal on IPTV and mobile television. However, TRAI will fix the maximum customer satisfaction conditions for the two services, the official said.

Cable operators can provide the IPTV service under their existing licence issued under the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act, 1995.

The ministry will also amend downlinking guidelines to allow IPTV service providers to receive signals for all channels from broadcasters. IPTV content will be regulated as per the programme code and advertising code notified under the cable Act.

For IPTV, the telecom ministry has agreed to TRAI’s recommendation that existing service providers with licences to provide triple play services and ISPs with net worth over Rs 100 crore can provide IPTV.

The Department of Telecommunications can also permit other telecom licensees to provide IPTV services as licensors, the TRAI had said.

The telecom ministry has given IPTV licences to Bharati Airtel and Reliance but more players are expected once the comprehensive policy is notified. The IPTV Forum says it expects 20 million connections by 2010.

In case of mobile TV, the government has agreed to auction mobile television spectrum and increase FDI to 74 per cent. “Licence holders will be able to use terrestrial as well as satellite-based routes for the transmission of the content to cover entire country,” a ministry official said.

The government will also allow new entrants to provide mobile television along with existing mobile service providers. Currently, Prasar Bharati is providing mobile television only in the New Delhi area. But this is not popular as digital video broadcast-handset-enabled mobile phones are expensive, a Prasar Bharati official said. But, the business is expected to rise once private broadcasters like Sony, Star and Zee enter the fray, he said.

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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