NEW DELHI: The Government said that permission holders of the first batch of FM Radio Phase III will have to pay Rs 9000 per channel, per city, per month as monitoring charges continuously to the Broadcast Engineers Consultants (India) Ltd (BECIL).
This will be subject to an escalation charge of five per cent per annum on monitoring charges.
The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry also put on its website the format of the Project Management Agreement between the permission holder and BECIL.
Under the agreement, BECIL will make all reasonable endeavours to complete each of the activities in respect of the building, installation, commissioning and completion of the common transmission infrastructure (CTI) to the satisfaction of the first party for delivery to the permission holder in accordance with the timeline set out, provided always that the legal and beneficial ownership and all right, title and interest to all and any parts of the licence holder’s share in the Common Transmission Infrastructure (at whatever stage of completion) and the Equipment shall at all times remain with the licence holder and BECIL will not have any right at law or in equity and at anytime to make any claim of title or create any lien, charge or other encumbrance whatsoever over all or any parts of the CTI or the equipment.
The obligations of BECIL have been set out in a clause and will automatically conclude upon the commissioning of the CTI. For the avoidance of doubt, the performance of equipment installed at the site shall be the exclusive responsibility of the licence holder.
In terms of the Phase III FM Radio Policy, successful bidders have to co-locate transmission facilities on existing All India Radio/Doordarshan (Prasar Bharati) towers or towers to be constructed by BECIL as the case may be and common facilities have to be integrated by BECIL.
The licence holders have to enter into an agreement with Prasar Bharati whereby Prasar Bharati has agreed to make available land and tower aperture for the cities from where the permission holders are operating to build, install and operate the common facilities and other equipment of the FM radio broadcast facility.
