The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) called on the Government of India to make a shift in its regulatory approach to the pay-TV industry.
Simon Twiston Davies, the CASBAA CEO, said, "The Indian authorities' current positioning is holding back the industry and introducing significant new constraints of the kind that slowed India's economic development for decades."
According to CASBAA, recent initiatives by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) and the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will severely limit development, not just of pay-TV, but of the entire Indian communications industry. CASBAA said that it would like to see more emphasis on promoting growth, rather than on restricting market flexibility, adding that international and domestic examples of thriving, lightly regulated markets are plentiful.
A CASBAA study last year entitled Regulating for Growth clearly demonstrated this linkage, under-scoring the success of markets such as Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Twiston Davies, said, "India can make immediate and enormous strides towards becoming a digital leader - if it takes fundamental steps to loosen restraints on industry growth. The size of Malaysia's pay-TV market, for instance, has doubled in the last three years."
In other Asian markets bidding for cable systems is generating offers of more than $1.5 billion each, yet there is little encouragement of fresh domestic or foreign investment into the India market. Meanwhile, CASBAA believes that the proposed Broadcast Services Bill would create a new pay-TV industry regulator potentially subject to political interference.
Twiston, added, "India needs to install a truly independent communications industry regulator,” he added, “Regulatory decisions should be technical and quasi-judicial, responding to the demands of the fast-changing media environment, and not subject to transient political pressures."
CASBAA
