Cable TV operators in the city staged a black flag protest outside the venue of a seminar on the Digital Addressable System here on Monday.
Operators associations, mainly from Bangalore and Mysore which are part of phase 2 of the digitisation drive, demanded that the March 31 deadline be extended. The Members of the Karnataka State Cable TV Operators Association submitted a memorandum to Yogendra Pal, Technical Advisor, Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, a key participant at the seminar.
Their demands include extension of the deadline, changing the revenue sharing model with multisystem operators prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and evolution of a licensing frame for local cable operators.
Patrick Raju, association president, said that the deadline was not feasible and demanded to know the status of implementation in the metros. Countering Mr. Pal's claim that digitisation was total in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, he said that 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.”
