In Chennai, the vote goes to CAS

At the end of the debate, a set of resolutions were passed, which would soon be forwarded to the Centre and states. The tone for the meeting was set by founder Exnora International M.B. Nirmal, who said ‘‘a big vacuum’’ existed in explaining CAS to the consumer.

Contending that there was confusion on the issue, Nirmal said buying a STB would only foster MSO monopoly. ‘‘With CAS, subscribers are forced to grope around like someone looking for a black cat in a dark room. Do we have no choice except to accept CAS? The government has taken a shift in policy without ever striving for a consensus,’’ he said. The real issue was whether or not to buy STBs, particularly when there were so many grey areas in the tariff rates announced by the broadcasters, said chief of the Confederation of Cable TV Subscribers’ Associations S. Ramasamy.

‘‘We urge subscribers to wait for a full disclosure on tariff rates,’’ he said. ‘‘CAS is subscriber-unfriendly and a goose with the golden egg only for broadcasters, MSOs and cable operators,’’ a subscriber said, adding cable monopolies could be brought to their knees by rejecting pay channels. ‘‘They would be forced to turn free-to-air and STBs would become irrelevant.’’

The general mood, however, seemed to be in favour of CAS as most subscribers said it checked random hikes in rates by cable operators. The brunt of the attack was reserved for STBs.

‘‘STBs currently being marketed are technologically obsolete and are yesterday’s relics,’’ N. Vijayashankar, an expert on cyber laws said. ‘‘The way STBs are marketed is illegal. Very soon, the laws governing Internet would also be applied to TV. Thus, advertisements on pay channels would amount to spam on the Net and are technically illegal,’’ he said.

Finding themselves on the defensive once too often, cable operators sought to rationalise CAS, but said a single smart card should be made compatible with boxes supplied by both MSOs. Contending that operators could never really come clean on the actual number of connections, Kishore Kumar, president, Tamil Nadu Cable TV Operators’ Association, said, ‘‘We might have been less than fair to broadcasters and MSOs, but we have never cheated consumers.’’ Making out an impassioned case for STBs, K. Suresh Kumar, GM, Hathway Cable, said if CAS failed in Chennai, it would only lead to broadcasters going in for arbitrary rate hikes.