Indian cable industry calls for IPTV regulation

The MSO Alliance, an Indian cable industry organisation, has asked the Indian government to regulate the country’s IPTV industry.

There is concern that without regulation, over 3,000 unauthorised television channels could enter Indian homes without control, including channels featuring adult content.

At the moment the IPTV industry in India is largely unregulated. The telecoms industry believes that it should come under the jurisdiction of the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) agreement, while the cable industry believes it should come under the power of the Cable Television Networks Act.

Under the Cable Television Networks Act, only channels which have permission to downlink (i.e. download channels from the satellite for further transmission) are allowed to transmit on cable and the direct-to-home (DTH) platform.

In a letter to Asha Swarup, Secretary of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, the Alliance said that keeping IPTV outside the remit of the Cable Television Networks Act would “dilute all existing government norms including downlinking guidelines and foreign direct investment (FDI) caps thereby harming the cable industry adversely”.

There is also concern that IPTV service providers could produce news content without complying with the 26% foreign direct investment cap.