Chennai : First it was Madras High Court (HC), then the Hyderabad HC, now the Sikkim HC and it seems more and more Court orders are putting spanners in the implementation process of DAS Phase III expansion.
The Sikkim High Court has ordered a stay on the analogue switch off on 31 December 2015 for a period of 12 weeks (till 28 March) considering that subscribers will be affected for no fault of theirs.
The order came after hearing a Writ Petition: No.73 of 2015 filed by All Sikkim Cable Operators Association through its President Mr Roshan Rai on 31st December. Mrs Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai, while giving the order considered several grounds put forth by the Association as genuine that included:-
- MSOs and LCOs have to bear a high cost of migrating to a digital addressable service (DAS) and there are no investors.
- Difficult terrain of the state is not conducive to laying of optical fibre Cables (OFC) required for Digital networks.
- Set-Top-Boxes not easily available in the country.
- Time limits for migration to digital regime are almost impractical.
The court also noted that the Association had written to the Secretary, MIB on 26 November 2015 apprising him of the constraints faced by the MSOs and LCOs and requesting for an extension of the deadline but the Ministry did not care to reply.
With this Arasu Cable in Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh MSOs are some of the operators who will be skipping the DAS Phase III expansion deadline set by Information and Broadcasting Ministry that expired on 31st December 2015.
In addition to the above the petition challenging Section 4A of Cable Television Networks Regulation Act 1995, filed by Om Systems from Indore is pending before the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
