Viacom18: Trai tells Kerala High Court that there will be no coercive action against broadcasters for not publishing RIO

The telecom regulator has given a verbal undertaking to the Kerala High Court that it will not take any coercive action against announcers for non-publication of the reference interconnection offer (River) based on the July 8 amendments to the broadcasting tariff regulations until the next hearing date.

Indian Foundation for Broadcasting and Digital Technology (IBDF), Star India and Viacom18 have challenged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s regulation that requires broadcasters to provide channels in DD free plate Also free of charge for private distribution platform operators (PDOs).

The next debate on the matter will take place on 4 September.

Broadcasters have argued that DD Free Dish cannot be put on par with other DPOs as it does not charge subscription fees from its consumers, whereas private DPOs charge subscription fees from their subscribers.

Trai had amended the transmission tariff regulation and introduced a condition that pay channels available on DD Free Dish must be made available to private DPOs in free-to-air (FTA) format.

The DPOs had petitioned Trai alleging that broadcasters were discriminating against them by charging them for the same channels that were available in FTA format on DD Free Dish. ET had earlier reported that the TV broadcasters were planning to challenge Trai’s directive to make paid channels on DD Free Dish free for other distributors. In its petition, IBDF contended that Trai’s onerous conditions will lead to a fall in the reach of the channels as broadcasters will have to either withdraw their channels from DD Free Dish or make them FTA for other DPOs and fall out of the pay channel brackets.

Currently, there are over 15 paid channels of news and entertainment genres on DD Free Dish. However, the entertainment channels are nominally priced as they broadcast old content.