MUMBAI: After Supreme Court of India gave the verdict in favour of Telecom Regulatory authority of India (TRAI) in the tariff order case, the petitioner Star India has published its reference interconnect offer (RIO) in accordance with the Tariff Order and Interconnect Regulations 2017.

As per the new rate card, the popular channels of the broadcaster including Star Plus, Star Jalsha, Maa TV, Asianet, Star Sports have been priced at Rs 19. Except for few HD channels, most of the channels under the category have been also priced at Rs 19.

Star India is also offering 28 bouquets with 4 different variations to cater to the diverse consumer segments based on their consumption. The variations of the bouquets are base, premium, HD-base, HD premium. While the base bouquet offers the best of entertainment, sports and movies channels in the customer’s language of choice, the premium bouquet includes English language offerings and channels with a differentiated content proposition on the top of Base offering.

The base and premium bouquets for SD channels in Hindi, Bengali and Marathi have been priced at Rs 49 and Rs 79 per month respectively while base and premium bouquets in other languages are priced at Rs 39 and Rs 69 respectively.

The base and premium HD bouquets in Hindi, Marathi, and Bengali have been priced at Rs 85 and Rs 120 per month. For other languages, the base and premium bouquets are priced at Rs 75 and Rs 110 a month.

The network has also revealed the name of four channels under sports and movies categories which will be launched by 31 December. The soon-to-be launched channels are Star Sports 1 Telugu, Star Sports 1 Kannada, Star Gold Thrills, Star Gold Thrills HD.

Recently, the two-judge bench of the apex court with Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and Navin Sinha dismissed Star India’s appeal against Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) recent tariff order. The principal area of the argument by the broadcaster was that the pricing of the content cannot be regulated by TRAI as it comes under the Copyright Act. The verdict has clearly pronounced that the as TRAI Act is in public interest, it should prevail over the Copyright Act.

As the tug-of-war was going on for a while, all the other major broadcasters already published their RIOs in late August and early September.