MUMBAI: A month after Star India’s reference interconnect offer (RIO) deals came into effect in the DAS areas, multi system operator (MSO) Hathway Cable & Datacom has come out with its new pricing and packaging system.

Hathway has been conducting meetings with operators in various areas, the last ones being in Aurangabad, Pune and Pimpri. As per cable operators, who were a part of the meetings, Hathway has said that it will be empowering and training the operators to run the business of collection from subscribers.

Four new packs have been introduced. The first is the ‘Basic Pack’ for Rs 230 that will, along with other channels, have seven Star channels. These are: Star Plus, Life OK, Star Gold, Movies OK, Channel V, NGC and Star Pravah, for Marathi regions and Star Jalsha in Bengal. This will depend on the stronghold of Hathway in the states.

The second pack is for Rs 289 and called ‘Popular Pack’. This will have, in addition to the above, a choice of one out of the two sports channels from Star Sports 1 or Star Sports 3. Both these channels show the same content in English and Hindi respectively.

The third pack will be for Rs 349 and will have Star Movies, Star World, Movies Action and FX while the last ‘Premium Pack’ for Rs 419 will consist of an addition of its other niche channels such as Fox Crime, Nat Geo Music, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo People, Fox Life etc.

Regional channels such as Asianet, Asianet Suvarna and Star Vijay have been kept out of packs and will be available on a-la-carte while all of Star’s channels will be available on a-la-carte as well.

Hathway will embark on a big marketing campaign to inform viewers about this and viewers can immediately switch over to new packs. For now, the MSO is not disconnecting signals to its subscribers.