New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) made changes in rules to ensure rates of channels on a-la-carte basis are not exorbitant compared with bouquet offers.
This is to plug loopholes in rules the regulator framed earlier to make it a must for broadcasters and cable companies to offer option of a-la-carte rates for all of their channels. But in many cases, subscribers had ended up paying more for the same set of channels than earlier.
Under the revised norms, TRAI said the sum of the a-la-carte rates of the pay channels forming part of a bouquet shall not exceed one-and-a-half times the rate of the bouquet of which such pay channels are a part. \
Additionally, the broadcast regulator has mandated that the a-la-carte rates of each pay channel, forming part of a bouquet, shall in no case exceed three times the average rate of a pay channel of the bouquet of which such pay channel is a part of.
The regulator has also set Rs 130 per month as the base fee to be paid to channel distributors by subscribers for availing 200 channels and Rs 160 for all free-to-air channels.
Broadcasters will have to publish the revised price on their websites by Jan 15, while distributors will have to publish the new retail price by Jan 30.
