STBs in Cas areas see 6% growth

[ajuravi]

NEW DELHI: Digitalisation is seeing slow growth in India. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has said the number of set-top boxes (STBs) installed in the Cas (conditional access system) notified areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai has increased to 607883 at the quarter ending March 2008. This is a 6.14 per cent growth from the 572706 STBs installed at the end of quarter December 2007.

Trai has also said that the maximum number of free-to-air (FTA) channels being carried in the cable TV networks are 133. This is based on the data received from the various multi-system operators (MSOs) across the country.

Out of 114 pay channels as reported by 17 broadcasters and their distributors at the end of the quarter ending March 2008, a maximum 94 pay channels are being carried in a cable networks.


Meanwhile, apart from All India Radio, there were 205 FM Radio stations in operation as on March 31 2008. During the quarter ending March 2008, 28 private FM radio stations came into operation.

No DTH license was issued during the quarter ending March 2008. Therefore, at present, apart from the FTA DTH service of Doordarshan (DD Direct Plus), there are six private DTH licensees. Out of these 6 licensees, three licensees (Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct) are offering pay DTH services to the customers as on 31 March, 2008 while others are in the process of rolling out their services.

http://indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2...july60.php