MUMBAI: GTPL-owned Kolkata Cable and Broadband Pariseva Ltd (KCBPL) has given its cable TV consumers in Kolkata 45 days time to decide on the television channel packages they would want to subscribe to after the switchover to digital cable TV.
KCBPL, in which Gujarat Telelink Private Ltd (GTPL) owns 51 per cent stake, will announce its channel packages and their prices shortly. The MSO is giving subscribers a 45-day preview of 400 plus digital channels and services at the same price that they are paying now for analogue cable TV.
The channels offered by the MSO include 20 HD and radio channels through its Cisco set-top boxes (STBs). GTPL KCBPL is also planning to offer 10 exclusive international channels across genres like adventure, action, and lifestyle.
GTPL KCBPL board member Sumit Bose said the idea behind the preview offer is to allow customers to make up their mind what kind of packages they want to choose.
"We believe in offering value to our customers and hence we have introduced an exclusive preview offer facilitating our customers to select their choice of channels and services from a wide array of offerings," Bose said.
After the 45-day preview period, GTPL KCBPL subscribers will have to choose from the channel packages that the MSO will announce.
The MSO says the offer is a way of facilitating digitisation in Kolkata which has gone through a lot of uncertainty on digitisation implementation. The MSO is also targeting lower income groups with Cisco Zapper STB targeted at low ARPU customers to be launched in the later part of this month.
He also said that there is a lot of churn happening in the Eastern metropolis due to the lack of preparedness of other MSOs.
"We are well stocked with Cisco STBs. We have almost finished seeding boxes on our network and are thus in a position to attract local cable operators (LCOs) from competing MSOs who are short of STBs to join our network," Bose said.
Bose said GTPL KCBPL has upgraded its head-end to provide 400 channels which in two-three weeks time will get upgraded to 450 channels and subsequently to 500 channels as recommended by Trai.
