Cable Operators up in arms against online payment facility

Cable Operators Guild of Madurai has filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court Bench here challenging a notification issued by Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation (TACTV), a government entity, on February 20 extending to the subscribers the facility of online payment of monthly subscription.

The Guild claimed that hundreds of Local Cable television Operators (LCO) would go jobless if the subscribers were allowed to pay the subscriptions either online or to representatives of TACTV without the intervention of LCOs.

As per the existing procedure, the LCOs were collecting the subscription at the rate of Rs.70 per connection and depositing Rs. 20 with TACTV. The rest of the amount was held by the operators for meeting the expenses incurred by them for providing the connections.

The LCOs had been complaining for long that Rs. 50 per connection was insufficient for them. Instead of taking measures to augment their income, the government had issued the new notification which would virtually force them to shut down business, the Guild claimed.

It said that the local operators would not be in a position to find out the monthly defaulters and snap their connections if the Corporation begins collecting the amount directly from the subscribers as enunciated in the recent notification.

Filing an affidavit on behalf of the Guild, its president A. Pandi alleged that the notification had been issued despite a promise made by the government that the creation of TACTV would not in any way cause harm to the cable operators’ business.