TRAI hikes cable tariff by 7%

The New Year is going to be expensive for the cable television consumers as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has hiked the cable tariffs by 7%, allowing the broadcasters to pass this increment to the customers from January 01, official said.

The telecom and cable TV regulator has amended the Broadcasting and Cable Tariff Order after a period of two years due to the impact of soaring inflation.

According to the amended cable tariff order, the tariff charges for 30 free-to-air channels and up to 20 pay channels have been hiked to a maximum of Rs.171 for tier-I cities, Rs.151 for tier- II cities and Rs.139 for tier-III cities.

As per TRAI index, all metropolitan cities and other major cities like Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, or Surat etc. come under the tier-I cities, while other big and medium cities like Kanpur, Nagpur, Kochi etc comes in tier-II cities. Rest of the cities and rural areas comes under the tier-III.

The tariff rate for a package of over 20 to 30 pay channels and 30 free-to-air channels will now be Rs. 214 for tier-I cities, Rs.182 for tier-II cities and Rs.171 for tier-III cities whereas the new tariff for the bucket of 30-45 pay channels and 30 free-to-air channels will be Rs.251, Rs.214 and Rs.198 for tier-I, tier-II and tier-III cities respectively.

For above 45-pay channels with clubbed 30 free-to-air channels, the new tariff charges will be Rs.278 (for tier-I cities), Rs. 235 (for tier-II cities) and Rs.214 (for tier-III cities); however, for Conditional Access System (CAS) mandated areas, the individual channels can charge to a maximum of Rs 5.35 (excluding taxes) per month as against the current tariffs of Rs. 5.0 per channels.

The primary bucket of 30 free-to-air channels has also been enhanced from current Rs.77 per month to now Rs.82 per month levied from the very first day of New Year.

However, providing a relief to new and existing CAS customers, the regulator has announced to slash the charges in both the running schemes from January 01, 2009.

In the first scheme where the security deposit was Rs.250 for availing the service has been reduced to Rs.200 while the monthly rental has also been reduced from Rs. 45 to Rs.34, informed TRAI in the release.

Similarly in the second scheme, the security deposit has been trimmed to Rs.750 from earlier Rs.999 while the monthly rental has also been diminished from Rs.30 to Rs.22 per month.

These are the upper ceiling charges fixed by TRAI and all the charges will be exclusive from other taxes, said Department of Telecommunication (DoT) in a statement.

Earlier, DoT had set the cable tariff rate on December 26, 2003 levels in 2004 and since then only a 4% rise had been allowed in the Broadcaster’s tariff.