Cable digitisation and its troubles discussed
PANAJI
The Department of Information and Publicity (DIP) in a meeting on Tuesday informed the State secretary of the current scenario of the digitisation of cable TV and apprised him of the troubles consumers faced in installing set top boxes.
The meeting attended by officials from the north and south Goa collectorates, DIP and secretariat officials discussed problems and issues faced by cable operators as well as consumers in the State.
Speaking to The Goan, DIP director Jayant Tari said, “The meeting of the task force at New Delhi will be held on Wednesday and as part of sensitizing the secretary of the situation here in the State, we sat and discussed the problems including the lack of sufficient set top boxes for every consumer.”
He added the meeting was also held as a means of generating feedback from officials in the State involved in ensuring the digitisation.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, GoI, will then take a decision based on the constraints affected by the consumers in the State. This decision said Tari, may include an extension or a procedure to be implemented in ensuring all of the State's cable connections is digitised.
According to the Ministry and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Phase I and II of the digitisation process has already been completed and Phase III was nearing its deadline on December 31. Goa’s major towns and municipalities were to be included in this Phase III deadline, however, a major chunk of cable TV consumers have yet to receive set top boxes with many raising questions about the type provided.
Consumer awareness group GOACAN had last week raised the issue with the collectorates asking that a meeting should be called on the implementation of the digitisation of cable TV.
“Many set top boxes provided to consumers at Rs 1,500 are not High Definition (HD) compliant and would not be usable if channels became HD in March 2016. They will have to spend another Rs 2,500 to get a HD compliant set top box and this has caused anxiety amongst consumers,” said GOACAN coordinator Roland Martins.
