NEW DELHI: A day after the Information and Broadcasting Ministry announced that it is extending the digitisation deadline in the four metros by four months to 1 November, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today issued a clarification that all its regulations and tariff orders have come into effect from the date of their publication in the official Gazette.

The broadcast sector regulator said that the date of coming into effect of any regulation or order issued by it could only be “as prescribed as Trai”. The Tariff order (Amendment) has come into effect on 30 April and the Quality of Service Regulations, Consumer Complaint Redressal Regulations and Interconnection Regulation (amendment) came into effect on 14 May.

Extending the deadline, the I&B Ministry had, on 20 June, said that “All the Trai regulations for DAS will come into effect from 1 November 2012.”

Trai also stated that the "Regulations and Tariff order has to come into effect prior to the timelines prescribed by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for timely and effective implementation of DAS.”

In its order yesterday, the I&B Ministry said Regulations on Tariff & Interconnection were issued by Trai only on 30 April 2012, instead of being issued in January 2012, as expected. The Quality of Service Regulations and the Consumer Complaint Redressal Regulations were issued on 14 May 2012 by Trai.

According to these regulations, every Broadcaster and MSO is required to publish its Reference Interconnect Offers (RIOs) within 30 days of issue of the Regulation. Another 30 days are required for negotiations between Broadcasters and MSOs. Thereafter, the MSOs and LCOs arrive at agreements which enable the consumers to have a clear indication of the terms and conditions for installing set top boxes and the prices of channels on an a-la-carte as well as on a bouquet basis.