New Delhi : While the Dec 2015 deadline for digitisation is fast approaching and with little efforts being made towards achieving the same, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has released a list of urban areas under Phase III of digital addressable system.
The list was prepared using 2011 census and information provided by all stakeholders. Broadcasters, Cable TV providers and DTH operators are eagerly awaiting rollout of Phase III cable TV digitisation programme.
Around 38.78 million urban TV households will be covered under the new digitisation programme. Tamil Nadu will see the largest expansion of digitisation with over 6 million TV households targeted under the new phase. States of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, are also expected to see fierce digitisation drive for TV services. According to MIB data, about 630 districts and 7,709 urban areas will be covered under the next phase of digital addressable system (DAS)
Harit Nagpal, CEO of Tata Sky said “the first two phases of the programme affected around 15% of TV households in India. we are hopeful that the latest leg of the digitisation drive will increase DTH adoption in India. Even when we were acquiring close to 10 million subscribers as gross, we were getting three to four net additions. Today, the industry picks six to seven million gross, it still makes three to four million net.”
The first phase of DAS had covered Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata, while phase II saw digitisation in 38 cities with over one million population. However, still major DAS areas in West Bengal and Tamilnadu falling under Phase I & II are yet to achieve 100% digitisation target due to various political reasons.
