In this city, CAS is a washout

Chennai is India's only metro to have introduced CAS. But CAS has failed to take off here

Consider the following. Since September 1, fewer than 10,000 set top boxes have been rented or sold in a market that has more than a million cable connections.

In other words, only one per cent of the close to 10 lakh cable television homes in Chennai have either rented or bought set top boxes.

Ergo, the conditional access system (CAS) has not exactly set afire Chennai, the only metropolitan city in India to have launched the system.

The lukewarm response to CAS in Chennai has been largely bolstered by several factors. First of all, the decision of all the major Tamil pay channels to go free-to-air.

Three popular pay channels, the Sun TV-controlled KTV, Raj TV and Star Vijay, decided to become free-to-air just before Chennai become India's first CAS city.

Nor do trade expect the regional free-to-air channels to become pay channels.

Says a source: "With most pay channels going off the air, the free-to-air channels are having a field day in terms of advertisement revenue. Why would they want to kill it by becoming pay channels?"

Kalanithi Maran, founder of the Sun TV network and son of ailing Union minister Murasoli Maran, did not respond to requests for comments on CAS. Nor did Sumangali Cable Vision or SCV, the MSO that Maran's family controls, comment.

Secondly, Chennai's two MSOs use different encrypting-decrypting technologies. Hathway uses NDS technology while SCV uses Irdeto technology.

The difference in technology means that those who buy a set top box from either of the two MSOs can't switch from one to the other when moving to a different locality where only one MSO operates.

Thirdly, some cable operators believe that the consumer has got a raw deal.

"In the pre-CAS days, 60 channels were available for Rs150 or so a month. Today the Rs 72 for free-to-air channels along with the interest cost on the investment in a set top box and the bouquet subscription charges take the monthly bill for the consumer to over Rs 300," a leading cable operator who comes under the Hathway umbrella says ruefully.

He further says that the difference in encryption technology adopted by SCV and Hathway and investment of Rs.400 in the smart card have not helped either.

Fourthly, CAS has faced some opposition too. Exnora International, a consumer group, approached the courts to stay the implementation of CAS in Chennai.

The Madras High Court quashed Exnora's petition but the chief justice also sought feedback from the central government on why CAS was introduced only in Chennai and not in New Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata as originally envisaged. The case comes up for hearing again on October 7.

M B Nirmal, founder and chairman of Exnora International, thinks that the court will stay CAS on the basis of the Centre's feedback.

Says he: "We are not fundamentally opposed to CAS. However we believe that the government has not done its homework before introducing CAS. There is still a lot of ambiguity attached to this new system."

The High Court's decision has ensured that stakeholders in the CAS affair "� broadcasters, multi system operators (MSOs), cable operators and the public "� are waiting and watching to see the outcome of the case.

Amidst all the chaos surrounding CAS in Chennai, some enterprising men in Chennai's Hindi-speaking belt tried recording popular serials (read: "Kyon Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi") on Star Plus, Zee and Sony, so that they could provide these in VCD format for week-end viewing.

Before the idea could spread to the rest of the city, the city police nabbed the culprits. For all this, however, CAS won't fade away into the sunset either. And thereby hangs a tale.

Executives at Hathway Cable and Datacom, one of the two leading multi-system operators (MSOs) in Chennai (the other is the Sun TV-controlled Sumangali Cable Vision or SCV), say that the major broadcasters won't go back to the old system where pay channels depended on local cable operators declaring their subscriber numbers.

K S Suresh Kumar, deputy general manager at Hathway Cable and Datacom, makes an additional point "� broadcasters are largely indifferent to revenue from Chennai at the moment.

"Only two per cent of broadcasters' revenues across the country comes from Chennai. Whether they are free-to-air or pay-and-watch does not affect their revenues," says Kumar.

Kumar also thinks that CAS will pick up. He expects 50,000 boxes to be shipped out in the next two months, thanks to the coming cricket season during which the Indian cricket team will visit Australia.

Hathway is trying to make buying a Rs 3,000 set top box easier. Says Kumar: "We are offering shopping vouchers worth Rs 500 and an iron box worth Rs 450 free with every set top box. The effective cost of a set top box will be a little over Rs 2,000 only."

On the claim that CAS has pushed up the public's TV viewing bill, he says that if CAS is not introduced in Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata, the cable TV bill could cross Rs 450 a month because broadcasters will jack up the rates they charge cable operators.

But Deepak Khanolkar, a director of Telenext Convergence, which makes set top boxes, perhaps sums up the position when he says: "Chennai going the CAS way was not a great challenge. There are only two MSOs in the market and only the cream of the viewers outside the regional channel network have been denied channels like HBO, Star Movies, Discovery and National Geographic. The real competition will come when the regional channels eventually become pay channels."