The Hindu : SCV to reduce subscription charges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 02, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

SCV to reduce subscription charges

By Sudhish Kamath

CHENNAI April 1. Four days after STAR switched off signals to one of the multi-system operators (MSOs), Sumangali Cable Vision (SCV), the parties seemed to be inching towards negotiations with SCV declaring its intent to pay and pass on the benefit of price drop to consumers and STAR specifying its terms again.

SCV today reiterated that it had already made the payments but STAR had not encashed the cheques. And also admitted its willingness to release a Demand Draft for the "contractual amount due" to STAR.

"The SCV will be reducing its subscription charges to customers (Cable TV operators) and will ensure that the operators pass on the benefits to the customer from April", Vittal Sampathkumaran, General Manager-Operations, SCV, announced.

Reacting to SCV's offer to pay the "contractual amount", Sameer Nair, COO, STAR India, said there was no contract in effect after the previous contract expired in December 2002. "They have not signed the new contract where we have dropped the price to Rs.35 in exchange for double declaration. When they have not signed any contract in the first place, I wonder how they released the said-cheques or how they arrived at the numbers. Only after we were told that the amount cannot be paid (on Thursday), we called the press and switched off the very next day", Mr. Nair said. Denying SCV's claim that it was never contacted by STAR, Mr. Nair said over 7 e-mails were sent to the management and a meeting took place with the director of SCV one day ahead of the press meet.

Copies of cheques supposedly sent by SCV to STAR total up to Rs.2,18,53,726--Rs.88,11,667 supposedly paid through 8 cheques dated January 20, an equal amount supposedly paid through 8 cheques dated February 21 and Rs.42,30,392 supposedly paid through 2 cheques dated March 20. When told about the cheques, the STAR COO stated again that no cheque was received and the amounts mentioned "seemed to have been worked out as per the old contract".

For Chennai alone, STAR is claiming from SCV about Rs.2.1 crores according to the new terms. Hence SCV's arithmetic of Rs. 2,18,53,726 pertained to its State-wide dues as per the old contract and terms which are no longer valid, Mr.Nair said.

The SCV in its press release, said it was "ready to air STAR TV channels on CAS (Conditional Access System) immediately" so that "viewers who do not wish to watch STAR TV channels can be relieved of forced payments to pay channels which they do not want to watch".

STAR was amused at the MSO's preparedness because even the task force that is planning the implementation of CAS, was still working out cost of set-top boxes, who is to pay, who is to make them, who is to sell, who is to audit the number of homes and other questions on piracy control, audit of boxes, preparedness to manufacture the volume required, after sales service of boxes were yet to find answers.

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