The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) issued Tuesday another warning to those MSOs and LCOs who had not heeded an earlier advisory to install monitoring devices at their headends and failed to submit relevant data.
The government had created a website for this purpose so the compliance reports and related data could be uploaded by the MSOs and cable ops after getting the devices installed.
“It has come to the notice of the Ministry that some of the MSOs are yet to get registered and furnish the information on the portal,” MIB said Tuesday, adding failure to do so by November 25 would attract penalties under the relevant clauses of the Cable Television Networks Rules,1994.
The MSOs were directed to furnish to relevant authorities information regarding headend locations, conditional access system, and details of transport stream/frequency, RF feed, platform services, CATV signal distribution areas and STB seeding.
Earlier in May, MIB had said that in order to monitor output feed of cable operators, the distributors would need to install a government-mandated monitoring device at their headends.
The MSOs and cable operators were requested to “cooperate with officials” visiting their premises for installation of the monitoring devices.
This system of monitoring had been demanded by broadcasters so as to check some shortcomings in the distribution ecosystem, including under-reporting of subscribers and signal piracy.