With most states staying the third phase of TV distribution digitisation, multi-system operator Ortel Communications today said government should treat third and fourth phase markets differently as smaller operators are not ready to make the transition from analog to digital.
"The fundamental issue in phase-III is you are addressing the smaller guys but in phase-I you were addressing the big guys. The smaller guys are not at all capable of implementing digitisation and there is no point in pushing them to meet a deadline that they are incapable of meeting," Ortel Communications chief executive Bihu Prasad Rath told a Ficci Frames session here today.
He also said phase III & IV have to be handled very differently from phase I & II and the government and the task force must work together.
The government had extended the deadline to implement digitisation in the phase III markets to December 31, 2015, from December 2014. But nothing much has happened since then.
Currently, implementation is stayed for varying periods across phase III markets in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Sikkim, and Telangana. In Tamil Nadu digitisation has been challenged since the phase-I itself.
Phase-III is the largest addressable market with an original estimated analog user base of 39 million households.
As per the fifth official list of urban areas to be covered under phase-III, nearly 14.6 million households or 44 per cent of total market may be impacted due to the stay.
As per an Icra report, the government, due to low household concentration in certain areas, remapped such areas from phase-III to phase-IV, and consequently, nearly 4.9 million households have further been removed from the current phase, bringing down total addressable market from 38.8 million households to 33.2 million, with the maximum impact being felt in Bengal, Kerala, Goa and Jharkhand.
Times Network managing director M K Anand said
digitisation has increased the viewership of English content.
"In 2003-2004, we had 6.5 crore English content viewers, which thanks to digitisation is 20 crore now," he said, expressing hope that English market (news plus entertainment) will cross 30 crore over the next decade.
On the over-the-top platforms, he said they will not make linear TV meaningless as each serves a different purpose. "I think newspapers are not going to die in the next 50-100 years as there is a certain utility for newspapers. Similarly, linear television has a different utility.
"Video on demand requires me to think of what I want to watch, while linear television offers the bliss of stumbled upon content. I feel that linear broadcasting will probably grow bigger," he said.
