The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a recommendation, on Saturday, said that all set-top-box (STBs) provided by cable operators and DTH services must support the facility of interoperability. The TRAI also asked the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry to make the provision of interoperability mandatory by formulating the requisite guidelines.
Interoperability is provision through which a customer would be able to change their cable operator or DTH service provider without requiring a new STB. Presently, the STBs provided by cable network providers are not interoperable, meaning they cannot be used for different service providers.
Apart from interoperability, the TRAI recommendation also calls for all digital television sets in India to have mandatory USB port-based common interface.
The recommendations also included the suggestion to set up a coordination committee by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, and the suggestion proposed that this committee should comprise members from TRAI, Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology, representatives of TV manufacturers and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). This committee, the TRAI proposed, would guide the implementation of the new STB rules, among both the cable providers and DTH service providers.
The TRAI has said that the recommendation is based on the idea that non-interoperability of STBs is depriving customers of freedom of changing their service provider, and also creating a hindrance to improvement in quality of service, technological innovation as well as the overall growth of the sector.
TRAI has asked the I&B Ministry to work with BIS to make required amendments in the specified standard for the STBs.
TRAI also said that DTH and multi-system operators (MSO) service providers should get six months to adopt “DVB CI+ 2.0 standards (with USB CAM)” in accordance with the standards set by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
