(30 May 2006 5:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: India’s first direct-to-home service Dish TV today issued an ultimatum to cable operators filching its signals.

In a rear guard action against piracy, a massive operation has been announced to crackdown on pirating cable operators who are using the Dish’s set-top boxes as a medium to illegally distribute TV channels (some of which are exclusively on the DTH platform) to the cable consumers.

According to Essel Group of Indistries additional vice-chairman Jawahar Goel, “It is important to send out the message that product counterfeiting will not be tolerated as it has an extremely detrimental effect on the whole fraternity, including content creators, broadcasters, and the government.”

ASC Enterprises, an Essel Group company, holds the licence for a DTH service in the country, which is marketed under the brand name Dish TV.

According to an official statement from Dish TV, a local cable operator in Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh was caught by the police, along with Dish’s anti-piracy team, on Saturday for illegally showing ESPN and Star Sports through a Dish TV box when he did not have an agreement with ESS to re-distribute the sports channels.

The police has seized the errant cable operator’s infrastructure and the chip of Dish TV, which gives access to the DTH service.

Commenting on the development, Goel added, “We expect support from broadcasting and the film industry as well to take up this effort to curb piracy, which is to the tune of over 10 billion annually.”

The official statement said that of the 1.1 million subscribers of Dish TV, about 5,000 have been found to be allegedly indulging in piracy of signals. While their connections have been switched off, legal action too has been initiated against them.