I&B wants cable industry to be on a par with telecom over infrastructure

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New Delhi: The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry is in the process of recommending an amendment in the state-level legislation and guidelines to incorporate cable operators as eligible entities along with telecom service providers and Internet Service Providers to be granted Rights of Way (RoW), which imply the rights of laying down and owning the infrastructure based on optical fibre or cable wire and transmission towers, the hardware that enables distribution of content.

With rules in most states enabling telecom and Internet service providers licensees to be granted RoW, the cable service providers are pressing for extension of the same rights to them if the era of digitalisation has to be ushered in the cable sector.

Even the broadcast regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had earlier suggested amendments in The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, to make it imperative that such rights be made available to licensees of digital cable systems. Trai had said the cost of digital cable services per user can be substantially brought down if service from a digital head-end is supplied to a larger area through optical fibre cable network. Noting that RoW is not available to cable operators as they are not licensed under Section 4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, the regulator had observed in 2005 that it might not be always possible for a cable operator to lay optical fibre network who in turn will have to lease such infrastructure from telecom operators. This arrangement may not prove to be beneficial compared to a scenario when cable operators have their own infrastructure. In sectors like broadband services and IPTV services the cable operators and telecom operators are direct competitors.

The guidelines related to the grant of RoW explicitly spell out only telecom and ISP licensees while the rights of cable operators is more implied and derived in nature, which doesn’t put permission granting authorities under any obligations to grant RoW to cable operators and almost acts as an premise to give preference to telecom and ISP vis-a-vis cable operators while granting such approvals.

Digitalisation of cable requires ready access for cable operators to extensive network of optical fibre as basic infrastructure. Digitalisation of cable will result in capacity augmentation which will allow more channels to be accommodated and broadcast, bring in various value-added services, transparency and better tax compliance. Currently only 5% of the conventional cable sector is on the digital mode. An IPTV operator delivering the same content as a cable service provider, is eligible for RoW, however a cable service provider is not, argues a multi-system-operator (MSO). A government official said even in the absence of such an enactment, cable operators have managed to get such permissions from time to time, which is how they have managed to erect the infrastructure that they currently possess. The real issue rests with the variability in rates charged even within a single state and the time frame, rather the lack of it, for granting permission.

Most cable service providers, however, maintain that they are also entitled for RoW as infrastructure providers for the simple reason that cable services are also covered under Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and department of telecommunications (DoT) has notified ‘Broadcasting Services and Cable Services’ to be telecom services under the Trai Act, 1997.

They also cite court rulings to establish that cable services are already covered under the provisions of Indian Telegraph Act and the discrimination in granting RoW is despite that. Rajasthan high court had held way back in 1993 that “The disc antenna as well as the cable network installed by the petitioners(cable operator in this case), therefore (both) require licence under the Indian Telegraph Act read with Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933. The transmission of prerecorded cassette through cable network also requires licence under these Act.” This is also the reason that registration of cable operators are also granted by postal authority, points out a cable operator.

The nodal ministry is also in the process of advising the state governments to develop an uniform procedure and uniform rates, which should be adopted by all concerned authorities within the state atleast if not across the states. Currently the grant of RoW is handled by multiple authorities within states and they charge differentially for granting the same permissions.

While laying overhead cable or optical fibre or poles, buildings could involve getting permission from authorities like local municipal authorities, electricity boards, electricity distribution companies, telephone poles owned by MTNL and BSNL, other utility poles, local bodies owning infrastructure, the laying of underground cable or fibre involves getting approval from local municipal authorities, public works departments, local urban development authority, Gram Panchayat, Railways among other depending on the region involved. For laying overhead cable or fibre, permissions are still granted on ad-hoc basis at arbitrary and exorbitant rates, complain cable operators. Different states charge varied rates and different authorities within in a single state charge at varied rate for granting the same permission.

In the absence of any well defined policy local bodies occasionally restrict competition and promote monopoly by permitting only one cable service provider per pole, said a MSO citing the instance of Orissa.