I&B ministry's SMS campaign to sensitize cable TV users

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The information and broadcasting ministry plans to launch an SMS campaign to sensitize cable TV subscribers in phase-I and phase-II cities about the need to fill the Consumer Application Form (CAF), an official release said on Friday.

The consumers are required to fill the CAF in order to exercise their choice of channels and make the payment for the channels of their choice only.

Officials said the ministry had set March 31, 2013, as the deadline for digital transition of cable TV in 38 cities in the phase II of digitization. The phase I of digitization covered Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.

The ministry has been monitoring the availability of set-top boxes with the Multi System Operators (MSOs). Broadcasters are already running scrolls on TV channels to inform the public about the importance of filling the CAF forms.

The release said the ministry has been consistently monitoring the progress made towards digitization during phase II.

As per the data received from the MSOs and Direct to Home (DTH) operators, 22 cities have already achieved 100 per cent target in phase II of digitization. Another 14 cities have shown considerable progress, and only in Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam the figure was less than 50 per cent.

The release said that over 80 fresh provisional registrations were issued to MSOs for operation in one or more cities of phase II with the condition that they would operationalize their digital head before the cut-off date.

The ministry has carried out technical inspection of all concerned MSOs and found that some of them had not operationalized their set-ups.

The release said that show cause notices were issued to 48 MSOs and the provisional registration of 15 defaulting MSOs has already been canceled.