Dear Gulveen This is in response to the news article “DoT, TRAI against move to delay

Cable digitization by a year” We really don't know from where you have got your data and analysis, to do this kind of a misleading story/ article. Anyways

let me put your facts correct here, so you are not coxed into doing these kind of misleading stories in the future.

1. This DAS regulation was brought in such a hurry “by way of bringing in an ordinance sometime in Dec 2011 by the erstwhile UPA Government. Later the then I&B Minister Mrs. Ambika Soni got the amendment bill to

the Cable TV Regulation Act 1995 passed in the Parliament in the first Parliament Session of 2012 ( We never witnessed such an efficiency in

the entire UPA tenure for other more important issues ) 2. Arbitrarily the phase- I , was notified to be implemented within 6 months

Phase- I DAS notified areas were Delhi, Mumbai. Chennai and Kolkata.

The implementation Task force was made on the instructions of Mr. Uday Verma then Secretary I&B. The task force members were mostly the

DTH operators, Star TV and their aligned MSOs and few Distributors of these Pay TV Broadcaster aligned MSOs like DEN Networks, Siti Cable & Hathway Cable & Datacom. When the industry at large objected to this

task force composition, they were not invited/ allowed to attend any of the Task Force meetings.

3. Mr. Uday Verma’s core team comprising Ms. Supriya Sahu, K.S Regimon

and Yogendra Pal spearheaded the entire hurried implementation plan “One Honest senior officer Mr. Rajeev Takru decided to get his transfer

done to some other Ministry, when he could not cope up with all manipulations being done at the MIB.

4. We raised issues on indigenous STB manufacturing, TRAI to prescribe

MRP rates for the pay TV channels, Registration of the LCO/LMOs who are an integral link on this distribution value chain. Our provisional

MSO registration / Licence issued was cancelled to send a message across that if anyone will oppose or question this “flawed” implementation then be prepared to have your MSO licence cancelled ,

even the Judiciary was instructed to not pass any orders on this DAS implementation. (Any how we got our MSO registration restored on our

plea to the double bench of the Delhi High Court. “On our matter been extensively argued by Mr. Aman Lekhi”

5. Anyways the implementation of DAS was to be from 31st Oct 2012 in the

4 notified metros and the entire MIB team was working overnight to ensure no analogue transmission was running “Due to shortage of STBs

a lot of consumers faced cable tv blackout for weeks, but this was not reported on any news channel or newspaper as Mr. Uday Verma had

personally summoned all the editors and had warned them not to cover any stories on consumer apathy and woes due to DAS implementation.

6. Interestingly the then I&B Minister Mrs. Ambika Soni just 3 days before

the implementation deadline of DAS left her ministry and charge was

handed over to Mr. Manish Tiwari, Who when contacted by various consumer groups and industry associations very conveniently made the excuse of he just taking over the charge and not aware of what his

predecessor has done. 7. You can check at your end from the business correspondent on the

historic valuation data of the US$ from July 2012 till Dec 2012 when the US$ went to its highest.

8. Most importantly the Digitization is in no way a facilitation to broadband,

Digital Cable technology has nothing to do even remotely with the Internet and broadband technology especially when we have only got

substandard plain vanilla STBs imported from china. After over invoicing them in order to launder Billions of US$ on behalf of few beneficiaries who had masterminded this DAS Scam

Kindly go through the attachments / our various representations made to the

Government in the past 2 years that will enlighten you on the dubious roles played by the TRAI, Pay TV broadcasters, their aligned MSOs and DTH

operators. While DoT has really no concern in this entire business of DAS.

So at least you will understand the matter better, before doing any coxed

stories in future.

With Best Regards

Vikki Choudhry

President- NCTA National Cable & Telecommunication Association E : vikki@ncta.in

M: +91 98111 44467 W: www.ncta.in