By IANS,
Kolkata: The percentage of digitisation of cable televisions in Kolkata has currently reached 90 percent, leading multi-service operator (MSO) Siticable said Tuesday.
“Ninety percent digitisation has so far been achieved in Kolkata,” Siticable director Suresh Sethia told IANS. “The process is still on,” he added.
According to him, total number of cable television subscribers in Kolkata is about 3.2 millions.
Sethia said the import duty hike on STBs from 5 percent to 10 percent would push up prices of the devices by about Rs.80 to Rs.150 in the metropolis.
“We will have to pass on the entire price hike to the subscribers,” he said.
A lot of STBs are currently being imported from China. Country’s cable operators and MSOs are also procuring the devices from Taiwan and South Korea.
In January this year, a section of cable operators in the city had demanded at least two months for complete digitisation of cable TV.
The forum of cable operators in the city, Cable Shilpa Bachao Committee, had contended that “forced digitisation would hit the customers” and that the metropolis was not yet ready for complete digitisation as only 65 percent of the total customers had installed set-top boxes.
According to the forum, the problem started with the MSOs procuring less set-top boxes.
Earlier, in a meeting with state Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim all city-based cable operators and MSOs had forwarded a proposal for ordering a complete blocking of analogue channels by Feb 1.