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'Full' flexibility for broadcasters to price channels: TRAI
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SME Times News Bureau | 13 Jan, 2020
Trying to assuage concerned broadcasters, the Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday that the recent amendments to
the broadcast tariff regulations would not impose restrictions on the
market players and there will be 'full' flexibility for them to price
their channels.
The statement came after several major television
broadcasters of the country on Friday criticised the regulation, saying
the new norms would impose restrictions on charges of paid channels and
may eventually result in some channels going out of business.
The
National Tariff Order (NTO) came into effect in February last year and
the regulator on January 1, 2020 announced changes to the NTO which is
now referred to as 'NTO 2.0'.
"It is important to note that the
broadcasters continue to have full flexibility to price their channel as
Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of any channel remains in forbearance," TRAI
said in a statement.
It said that NTO 2.0 prescribes linkage
between a-la-carte price and bouquet by mandating that sum of the
a-la-carte channels in a bouquet will not be more than 1.5 times to that
of bouquet price.
"It has also prescribed condition that MRP of
a a-la-carte channel should not be more than Rs 12 per month to be part
of the bouquet which was Rs 19 earlier. These steps become necessary to
curb misuse of pricing facility by few broadcasters," the statement
said.
The regulator further said in the statement that after
implementation of NTO, some broadcasters enhanced their channel prices
drastically, which in large number of cases were more than 100 per cent.
Terming such price increase as anti-consumer, TRAI said it
believes that transparent mechanism needs to be adopted to encourage
market discovery of channel price, but any attempt to scuttle consumer
choice either through non-transparent pricing practices or other similar
means need to be discouraged.
It noted that the amendments
address the teething issues faced by the consumers, while balancing the
interests of broadcasters as well as the distribution platform operators
(DPO) to create a level playing field. These amendments are to address
certain anomalies in the market which necessitated review for achieving
the orderly growth of the sector, TRAI added.
It further said that the amendments provide appropriate time to stakeholders for implementation.
"Broadcasters
may publish revised MRP of a-la-carte channels and bouquets by January
15, 2020. Similarly, DPOs may publish revised offerings on their website
by January 30," it said, adding that the amendment come into effect
from March 1, 2020.
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