TRAI has already announced new DTH rules and regulations for cable TV subscribers. This new TRAI regulations presented an intention of dispersing the control among number of investors in the cable and DTH industry. TRAI declared that the new regulations will helpful for subscribers to reduce their cable or DTH bill by paying only for selected channels which they request to watch. However, that didn't happen for number of cable or DTH TV subscribers.
“TRAI’s new cable or DTH rules and regulations could be more increase in charges that subscribers will have to pay. The components such as Network Capacity Fee, add-ons, base pack, and taxes will be raised TV bills for the customer. This is precisely the opposite what was assured to the customers by TRAI.
As per the new rules, broadcasters have scheduled their pricing policies very wisely. Channels which are more popular among audience have picked for the higher prices. Likewise, popular GEC channels have decided their price of Rs. 19. Selecting at least 10 such channels are causing in higher TV bills for the subscribers.
Crisil senior director Sachin Gupta reported, “Our overall statistics of the influence of the new rules indicates a variations in monthly TV bills. Depending on the current estimating, the monthly DTH or cable bill can be from Rs. 230 to 300 for each month for consumers who choose for the top ten channels, but it will less for those who selected top five channels.”
Due to this, customers are getting lesser channels with higher prices than earlier. The TRAI’s new regulations surely make consumers to pay for only what they wish to watch, but has indirectly bounced the charges by a wide margin and reduced the channels.
Because of this, it is expected that customers will now select channels more cleverly on the basis of quality of the content. This variation in content will convey competition in between the segment, which could lead stockholders to ultimately reduce the prices at a future phase.
With higher cable or DTH TV bills, it is expected that customers will trench TV subscriptions on excuse of increased prices and select for OTT platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Zee5, Hotstar, and others. Among these, most of the platforms transfer the same content from the cable or DTH channels and host exclusives.