NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has two days more to come out with the real reason for suspending the auctions on its DTH service FreeDish in August this year. From 27 October 2017 the telecoms and broadcast disputes tribunal TDSAT will hear two petitions challenging the decision of public broadcaster.

In the last hearing, the tribunal had told petitioners Cinema 24x7, (distributors of WOW Cinema),  News Nation Network and others to file applications with Prasar Bharati. It had said it would hear the matter if not resolved by the pubcaster.

When the matter came up yesterday, only Cinema 24x7 (WOW Cinema) was represented by its counsels. Prasar Bharati, represented by Assistant Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, sought two more days to finalise the government and Prasar Bharati’s stand on the issue.

Soon after Smriti Irani became the Minister of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) few months back, the decision of halting the bids for FreeDish slot was announced. This came at a time when FreeDish was testing its MPEG4 technology in an attempt to encrypt the platform and also expand the number of TV channels that could be carried. At present 80 channels are carried on the FTA DTH platform.  

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