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I&B sec Varma: “DAS Phase II roll-out smooth”
NEW DELHI: India‘s historical march towards cable television digitisation has taken a giant leap forward with the government expressing satisfaction over the implementation of Digital Addressable System (DAS) that covered 38 cities and towns in phase II.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Information & Broadcasting (I&B) ministry Secretary Uday Kumar Varma said that analogue signals had been switched off in 33 of the 38 towns at the stroke of midnight of 31 March.
A confident Varma expressed that the success of the first and second phase of digitisation has strengthened his resolve that government‘s digitisation initiative was on track to be completed before the 31 December 2014 deadline.
Five cities in Gujarat and Karnataka have been left out since there was a stay by Gujarat and Karnataka High Courts on DAS. Overall 75 per cent of the television homes in these 38 cities have been digitised, said Varma.
In Gujarat, digitisation in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot has reached 50 per cent with Vadodara leading the pack with 70 per cent digitisation.
Varma also asserted that seven cities including Hyderabad, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Allahabad out of the 38 had 100 per cent digitisation, while another nine had achieved over 75 per cent.
However, he did confess that towns like Srinagar, Vishakhapatnam and Coimbatore were slow in seeding of STBs. Around 12 million of the 16 million TV households had been digitised, he said.
He said the Ministry was keeping a watch on the situation with regard to STBs and said his information was that there were enough STBs at present for all the 38 cities in fourteen states and one union territory.
“It was a mammoth task and I am happy that the switch-over had been smooth, without any law and order problems,” he said in a candid conversation.
Asked about the 48-hour cable TV blackout in Delhi, Varma brushed it aside by saying that it has been an abject failure. He, however added that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will look into the grievances of the LCOs.
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
