Chennai: Tamil Nadu government owned Cable TV distribution arm Arasu Cable TV has announced that Seven International vendors had shown interest to supply the set-top-boxes in response to the revised international tender floated by TACTV for the supply of 70 lakh STBs.
The Information and Broadcasting ministry has offered the provisional MSO license to TN Arasu Cable TV during May 2017 and mandated the corporation to complete the process of digitization before 17th July 2017.
Based on this development TACTV has floated a tender in May month itself. However, due to poor response to the tender, the Corporation has tweaked the terms and conditions of the tender and extended the last date of submission of bidding application from 5th June to 14th June 2017. The dead line of the same got over yesterday evening.
According to an official of the TACTV, the Corporation has received seven bidders against the tender floated for the supply of STBs. The same will be subjected to the scrutiny of expert team comprising the techies from IIT and C-DoT (R&D division of Indian govt owned Telecom Technology Company) and a final decision will be taken based on the advise and in-puts of the expert team.
TACTV has planned to offer free STBs to 70 laks Subscribers in Tamil Nadu and planning to offer digital connections for a monthly subscription rate Rs 130/- as per the TRAI’s suggestion. Such a lower pricing is likely to hamper the private MSOs who will not be able to offer nether a free STB nor the subscription rate of Rs 130/-.
