Mumbai: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has directed all distribution platform operators (DPOs) to ensure compliance with the provisions of the interconnection regulations pertaining to the listing and display of TV channels on the electronic programme guide (EPG).

The telecom regulator has also asked DPOs to furnish a compliance report within fifteen days from the date of issue of the direction.

After analysing the data received from multi-system operators (MSOs), Trai observed that some MSOs have failed to comply with the provisions under interconnection regulations relating to the listing of channels in EPG and display of channels in EPG.

In a letter dated 17 September 2020, Trai had advised all MSOs to ensure compliance with the provisions of the interconnection regulations related to assigning a unique channel number for each TV channel available on the distribution network and indicating genre of TV channels as declared by broadcaster in the interconnection agreement and to submit to the authority data with respect to the same.

As per the regulations, “every broadcaster shall declare the genre of its channels and such genre shall be either ‘Devotional’ or ‘General Entertainment’ or ‘Infotainment’ or ‘Kids’ or ‘Movies’ or ‘Music’ or ‘News and Current Affairs’ or ‘Sports’ or ‘Miscellaneous.”

“It shall be mandatory for the distributor to place all the television channels available on its platform in the electronic programme guide, in such a manner that all the television channels of a particular language in a genre are displayed together consecutively and one television channel shall appear at one place only.”

“Every distributor of television channels shall assign a unique channel number for each television channel available on the distribution network.”