Mangaluru, December 26: It has been instructed that, by December 31st, all the cable operators have to install digital set-top boxes for their consumers though they requested to give some more time to install set-top boxes. Additional deputy commissioner Kumar passed this instruction on Saturday, December 26th.
Addressing a meeting held at the deputy commissioner’s office here, ADC Kumar said, from January 1st, 2016; the present analogue signals will not be transmitted. Since 2011, the digitalization process has been going on. This is the third phase of digitalization wherein all the televisions in the city with cable connections have to operate with the digital set-top boxes. In this regard, 15 days ago, a meeting was held and emphasis has been laid on this since the beginning of the year.
In the meeting cable operators, urged the ADC to extend the deadline stating they had planned to install the set-top boxes step by step. Only 65,000 set-top boxes were available in the market but there is a requirement of about 1,00,000 set-top boxes. Hence it is very difficult to install the set-top boxes within the given deadline.
In response, the ADC said that in this regard already a request had been submitted by the Karnataka government, but it was not accepted. He instructed the cable operators to install the set-top boxes without delay, as households without set-top boxes would not be able to watch TV channels from January 1st onwards.
The intension behind the compulsion is to provide better signal quality to the viewers and stop the tax evasion. Once the digital set-top boxes are installed, signal related problems will be solved, he said.
Khader Shah- District information officer, cable operators and others were also present during the meeting.
