3 cheers to Nripendra Mirsa, Chairman, TRAI for keeping IPTV out of CableTV act. What’s the big deal ? CableTV networks in India are highly unorganized and controlled by local politicaians or men with muscle-power except SitiCable and Hinduja’s TMT. You might want to recollect how Siticable MD was murdered in the cable wars during the Dot Com Boom.(See BusinessWorld Magazine, dated 13th November 2000) The nostalgic story doesn’t stop there, Gangster Chotta Rajan controlled Hindujas cable Network in Mumbai and SUN TVs Sumangali Cable Vision forced BPL to move out of Coimabtore.
Indian Telcos, Bharti-Airtel & Reliance didn’t want to deal with the mess of CableTV and had lobbied for a separate act. Technically, IP networks are different from Cable networks, however, we are heading towards an era of convergence and most experts are of the opionion that, all future innovation & services will be on IP based networks. Hopefully, they will sail through easily as TRAI hasn’t finalized the guidelines and has invited suggestions and opinions from various experts.
