New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) (Amendment) Regulations, 2019 on 30th October based on the comments received against the draft regulations and subsequently Open House Discussion (OHD) on 26 September 2019 in Delhi.
Based on these Regulations the Authority has amended Schedule III of the Interconnection Regulations 2017, mainly on Scheduling and Scope of Audit, The Transactional capacity of Conditional Access System (CAS) and Subscriber Management System (SMS) system, Support for Overt and Covert fingerprinting in Set-Top-Boxes and Watermarking network logo for all pay channels.
The amendment allows Distributor of Pay TV broadcasting services to keep a minimum gap of six months between the two annual audits and the maximum time gap is eighteen months.
Similarly, the minimum transactional capacity required for CAS and SMS systems have been revised to 5 % instead of earlier 10 %. Since implementation of the new framework, all Distributors are deploying STBs that are compliant with Covert and Overt fingerprinting.
The Authority has taken a pragmatic view on this aspects owing to already existing field deployments and revised the extant provisions of the regulations.
