Centre seeks more time for CAS rollout

The Centre today sought at least nine more months to arrive at a consensus between stakeholders before implementing the Conditional Access System (CAS). On March 10, the Delhi High Court had directed the government to implement the system in four weeks.

Responding to the government's appeal today, a division Bench of the Court, headed by Justice Virender Jain, posted the matter for hearing on May 24.

While stating that CAS could not be implemented within four weeks as per the order of the Court on March 10, the government in its appeal said common ground had to be arrived at among the broadcasters, multi-service cable operators (MSOs) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in consultation with respective state governments before it was implemented.

Consumers would not be able to shift to CAS within a short period of four weeks. This would cause confusion as there was no consensus on subscription charges, bifurcation of free-to-air and pay channels, pricing and availability of set top boxes, the appeal filed through Rajeev Mehra stated.

CAS implementation was not solely dependent on the government as it would play the role of a facilitator only, in terms of issuing relevant notifications on setting out legal obligations, it added.

If CAS was made operational on the prescribed date, there would be complete blackout of all pay channels as broadcasters would not be in a position to broadcast individual pay channels.

MSOs and local cable operators would also not be able to re-transmit them to consumers, the appeal said. It added that the ministry for information and broadcasting was holding regular meetings with all stakeholders to arrive at a modified scheme acceptable to all and capable of being implemented on the ground.

Listing grievances of various stakeholders, the government said MSOs, cable operators and consumers wanted the broadcasters to declare a-la-carte prices and the maximum retail price for each of their pay channels, within the overall ceiling to be fixed by the Centre.

Besides, there was no agreement on any revenue-sharing formula between broadcasters and MSOs on the one hand and MSOs and cable operators on the other.

While broadcasters feared piracy and under-declaration of subscriber-base by MSOs and cable operators, the latter alleged broadcasters would continue to use arm-twisting techniques to thrust unviable channels and demand exorbitant prices.