MIB to amend guidelines to make India a hub of uplinking TV channels via satellite
The announcement was made by MIB secretary Secretary Apurva Chandra said while addressing the Indian Space Congress 2022
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) will soon come out with fresh uplinking and downlinking guidelines for satellite TV channels, Secretary Apurva Chandra said while addressing the Indian Space Congress 2022. He added that the new guidelines will aim to make India a hub for uplinking of TV channels by deregulating uplinking of satellite channels from the country.
"The uplinking/downlinking guidelines of 2011 are now around 11 years old. We are in the process of revising these guidelines and the revision should be out very shortly. We want to deregulate the uplinking of satellite under the guideline so that India can become a hub," Chandra stated.
The deregulation of uplinking channels will help broadcasters from neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka to uplink channels from India. He added that India will become an uplinking hub if it is cost-competitive and satellite footprint covers a larger geography.
"Uplinking can be deregulated so at least the channels from the neighbouring countries let's say Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka can use India as a hub for uplinking of channels and that will provide a further boost to the satellite communication sector of the country," he added.
He noted that the satellite capacity is not being adequately utilised due to the use of MPEG-2 video compressions format by the industry players including Prasar Bharati's DD Free Dish. "Prasar Bharati offers 80 channels in MPEG-2 format. If it moves to MPEG-4 format then the number of channels can be increased to 160," he said.
He also stated that the process of migrating DD Free Dish customers to MPEG-4 has been a time-consuming process. "We have been trying but till now over the past, two to three years out of a total of 40 million only about 1 million have been converted to MPEG-4. The offtake has been poor but then for the proper usage of the spectrum it would always be better that we move from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4," he stated.
Chandra also pointed out that the union government's decision to launch 200 educational channels will also require transponder capacity to reach the length and breadth of the country.
He also touched upon the issue of decline in the pay-TV universe and the growing consumption of content on the phone. "The other point is that now communication and broadcasting there is more and more convergence and people would like to look at the content through mobiles and TV the growth of TV industry TV in India has been static over the past two-three years. The number is about 200 million and it has been static whether it is the cable-connected homes or whether it is DTH services," he said.
Speaking about the direct-to-mobile broadcasting technology being developed by Prasar Bharati alongside IIT-Kanpur, Chandra said that the pilots have been successful and the technology is capable of providing 200 to 300 channels in rural areas over a local Wi-Fi network.
