The reason I chose to bring up this topic now is because the issue has become more important than ever before. The TRAI, since 2017, has been trying hard to regulate the pricing and transmission of broadcasting content with the objective of empowering consumers with the flexibility of choice. As a result, the broadcasting industry has been anchored around a set of onerous rules for carrying content over DTH, Cable, and IPTV licenses. However, disseminating content over OTT makes these onerous obligations (8% license fees, prices regulations, etc) suddenly disappear – causing the broadcasting (distribution) industry to shrink at the expense of OTT. Therefore the question one needs to ask is – What is the relevance of these rules (TRAI’s NTO and MIB’s License Fees) when OTT can be used to circumvent them easily?
That too when the thickness of the OTT pipe and its spread, are increasing day by day, thanks to the ubiquitous adoption of smartphones, and the networks laced with 5G capabilities. This makes me wonder, why such an important issue has been totally ignored in the TRAI’s recent paper titled – ”Review of Regulatory Framework for Broadcasting and Cable Services” dated 8th Aug 2023.
