TRAI seeks comment to formulate regulations for ground-based broadcasters

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday released a consultation paper to create a regulatory framework for ground-based broadcasters.

The stakeholders can send written comments by November 15 and counter comments, if any, are welcomed by November 29, said the telecom regulatory body in a statement.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has earlier issued guidelines for uplinking and downlinking of satellite television channels in the country.

These contain the terms and conditions for TV broadcasting services, make it mandatory for the broadcasters to use satellite medium i.e. uplinking and down linking of television channels through satellite, for providing their channels to the distribution platform operators (DPOs).

According to TRAI, the broadcasters can provide their television channels to DPOs terrestrially too, using ground-based technologies.

Like traditional TV channels, which are uplinked and downlinked through satellite, the terrestrially transmitted channels may also be carried on multiple DPO networks simultaneously and the DPOs can retransmit them on commercial terms to the subscribers.

“Therefore, there is a need to have a regulatory framework enabling use of ground-based technologies,” said the regulator.

In June, TRAI recommended the use of digital terrestrial broadcasting to mobile devices as well as TV as complementary broadcasting technology to co-exist with cable as well as satellite broadcasting.

The move should enable digital TV content on mobile devices using digital terrestrial broadcasting technologies like 5G broadcasting and direct-to-mobile broadcasting.

Last month, the government released a consultation paper to help formulate a policy for the private digital radio broadcasters in the country. TRAI is seeking stakeholders’ comments on various issues relating to formulation of digital radio broadcast policy for private radio broadcasters.

According to TRAI, the digital radio broadcasting can provide new opportunities to radio broadcasters as well as a host of value-added-services to the listeners.