Cable TV Bills To Come Down By 14% After TRAI New Amendments

To help consumers, TRAI has recently come up with new amendments for DTH and cable operators. A new report by research firm ICRA suggests that the new rules will bring down bills by 14 percent from the current prices. The new changes will be effective from March 1.

TRAI in its new amendments said that now consumers have to pay only 130 for 200 channels. Earlier, users were paying Rs. 160. "These changes in tariff could potentially lower the direct-to-home (DTH)/cable bills of the subscribers by up to 14 percent from the present levels and encourage subscribers to exercise their right to choose and opt for a-la-carte channels," Icra said in a statement.

The research firm noted that earlier TRAI wanted consumers to choose the channels whether it is free to air or pay channels. In fact, the firm believes that this new order will bring down prices of all new popular channels like Star, Sony, and Sports. It said that the prices will come down to Rs. 12 from Rs. 19.

"We do not expect the bouquet prices to increase, though the channel offerings under the bouquet are expected to reduce. While an earlier bouquet price of Rs 349 included 81 pay channels, the same is now expected to fetch only 51 pay channels. However, the same should not adversely impact the subscribers, as their viewing is largely restricted to a few popular channels," Sakshi Suneja, Assistant Vice President at Icra.

There is no doubt that this will help the consumers, but somehow some broadcasters are totally against these new rules. Similarly, Star India and Sony Pictures Networks believe that these new amendments are negative for the industry.

On the other hand, some are agreed to remove channels from the bouquets, but they will hike the price of those channels at Rs. 25 per month. Besides, they (broadcasters) are planning to take a collective decision on that front soon.