Mumbai: Industry watchdog – the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)  – has bowled another bouncer at the Indian broadcasting sector by recommending tight – and many say impossible deadlines - deadlines for the Prasar Bharti owned DTH operator DD FreeDish.

In its latest round of recommendations, the TRAI has asked it to stop selling non-addressable set top boxes for DD FreeDish by 1 January 2025. The public service broadcaster has been selling these for more than a decade and more than 45 million homes have them. The regulator has advised DD FreeDish to  replace them with indigenously-developed STBs and addressability built in by an organisation such as C-DoT. An additional caveat that has been mentioned is that the boxes should be inter-operable with those of other cable TV netwoks and DTH platforms. It has stated that even private cable TV networks and DTH operators should also take the inter-operable STB route.

The authority has also asked it to start encrypting all private channels on its platform by 1 April 2025, followed by all DD, education, and radio channels within four years.

“This is madness,” said a senior legal counsel at a major broadcasting network. “Does the TRAI know what it is doing? Where are the chips available? The circuits? And inter-operability – which developed market has inter-operable STBs between cable TV and DTH? Each player has his own CAS? I am sure this is going to be challenged very shortly. “

Another broadcasting executive added: “The recommendations make it appear as if the TRAI wanted to placate the DPOs who have been demanding a level playing field between DD and the encrypted platforms. Please check whether  DD and Prasar Bharti expected things to go in the direction that TRAI has said. I don’t expect the recommendations to be implemented in my lifetime.”

(Indiantelevision.com had managed to get only the private sector’s viewpoint and had not managed to get through to either TRAI or Prasar Bharti at the time of writing.)