NEW DELHI: Cable TV operators from Bangalore and Mysore staged a black flag protest here to oppose the deadline for the second phase of digitisation on 31 March which will cover these cities.

The protest was held outside the venue of a seminar on the Digital Addressable System (DAS) here.

Operators associations demanded that the 31 March deadline be extended. The members of the Karnataka State Cable TV Operators Association submitted a memorandum to Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s Technical Advisor Yogendra Pal who also participated in the seminar.

Their demands included extension of the deadline, changing the revenue-share model with multi-system operators (MSOs) prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and evolution of a licensing frame for local cable operators (LCOs).

Association President Patrick Raju said the deadline was not feasible and demanded to know the status of implementation in the metros. Countering Pal‘s claim that digitisation was total in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, Raju said the situation on the ground was different.
 
“Let them set it right there, carry out an honest assessment and then start the next phase. This is being done in haste without consulting us, who are the major stakeholders,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that around 47 per cent of consumers in Bangalore and 38 per cent in Mysore had already taken new digital set-top boxes. The sources claimed that MSOs in the two cities had adequate number of STBs.