(4 January 2008 5:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has made no changes in the FDI (foreign direct investment) cap for provision of IPTV services, sticking to the 74 per cent for telecom licensees and 49 per cent for cable TV operators.

In its final recommendations on IPTV, the sector regulator has said that telecom service providers (UASL, CMTS) having license to provide triple play services and ISPs with net worth more than Rs 1 billion and having permission from the licensor to provide IPTV, will not require any further registration; they can provide this service under their existing licenses.

"DoT can permit any other telecom licensee to provide IPTV services as licensor. Similarly cable TV operators registered under Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act 1995 can provide IPTV services without requiring any further license," the Trai recommendation says.

On the major licensing issue, Trai has recommended that telecom service providers providing IPTV service be subjected to percentage of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) as license fee as applicable from time to time.

Presently, this is 6 per cent, 8 per cent and 10 per cent for access service licensees in category "C", category "B" and category "A" circles, respectively, and 6 per cent for ISPs.

In case any telecom service provider registers itself as cable operator and provides IPTV using its telecom resources, it shall be considered as service under telecom license. Such a service provider shall have to pay the license fee on IPTV revenue also as applicable to its telecom license.

The BIS should be requested to expedite standardization of IPTV set top box specifications to help cable operators while designing their IPTV networks, Trai has recommended.

On the content issue, Trai has said that telecom licensees shall transmit only such channels in exactly the same form (unaltered) for which broadcasters have received up-linking/down-linking permission from the government of India (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting).

In such cases, the responsibility to ensure that content is in accordance with the extant laws, rules, regulations, etc. shall be that of the broadcaster and telecom licensee will not be held responsible.

"In case of contents other than TV channels from broadcasters, the telecom licensee shall be responsible for observing programme code and advertisement code and such programme code and advertisement code shall be the same as provided in Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act 1995 and rules thereunder," the recommendation says.

In addition to this, such licensees will also be bound by various acts, instructions, directions, guidelines issued by the government from time to time including IT Act 2000 to regulate the contents.

Telecom service provider providing IPTV will show only those news channels which have been approved by the I&B ministry, recommends Trai.

All telecom licensees/cable operators before providing IPTV will give a self-certified declaration to the I&B ministry, DoT and Trai, giving details such as license/registration under which IPTV service is proposed, the start date, the area being covered and details of the network infrastructure, etc.

Suitable modifications have been recommended in respective licenses of telecom service providers to incorporate above provisions.

As it had done in the draft recommendation earlier, the Trai says in the final recommendation that the up-linking/down-linking guidelines should be amended to enable the broadcasters to provide signals to all distributors of TV channels such as cable operators, multi-system operators, DTH operators, HITS operators and IPTV service providers.