[icernet] 'Ground realities do not support CAS'

[Arul Selvan]

"Post-CAS, these consumers would have to spend between 3 per cent and 6 
per cent or between 6 per cent - 12 per cent of their monthly income on 
cable television," the report notes. At present these consumers spend on 
average either between 2 per cent - 4 per cent or 4 per cent - 8 per 
cent of their monthly income on cable TV. "Consumers would be heavily 
impacted due to unaffordability and lack of choice. .with consumers 
deprived of their choice of popular news, documentary sports and movie 
channels, significant protest can be expected," the report noted.

Globally, the rollout of addressable systems has been based on digital 
STB technology with early analog models being phased out. In markets 
like United States and United Kingdom, that have sizable digital systems 
on cable platforms, operators have invested in technology and 
infrastructure upgrade and subsidized the cost of digital STBs. In the 
United  States, after six years of roll out of digital services, only 26 
per cent to total 73 million cable subscribers use digital STBs. In UK, 
with 2.1 million digital cable service customers, cable operators have 
lost out to satellite in the roll out of digital services. In Asia 
deployment of digital set top box has proven particularly slow, 
especially in China, HongKong, Singapore Japan and Australia, observes 
the report.

In India, STB deployment is likely to remain restricted by capital 
restraint and poor financial health at the MSO level, the report says. 
Raising concerns about security issues, the report notes that most MSOs 
have placed orders for up to 3,00,000 low-cost digital STBs. "The 
maority of these low cost models have rarely been deployed globally as 
they can be easily hacked," the report added. Another area of concern 
raised by the report relates to inadequate investment in the subscriber 
management system (SMS). This arises from the fact that the local cable 
operator continues to own the last mile in the post-CAS era and 
therefore control critical subscriber distribution and management. "No 
local cable operator has invested in quality SMS and it remains unlikely 
that any LCO or MSO will invest in an SMS to provide quality of service 
and addressability," the report said.

The report is in favour of headend-in-the-sky (HITS) model as proposed 
by MSO Siticable. "HITS might prove scalable as it can cope with the 
multiplicity of headends in the Indian market (6,800) and relieve the 
LCO from investing in multiple encoders to service consumers with CAS," 
the report notes. However, HITS deployment is likely to be delayed until 
the potential nationwide roll of CAS takes place.

Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=46853028