With this, the move to introduce a Headend-In-The-Sky (HITS) delivery platform  has received a boost. This will promote digital transmission of television  channels leading to high-quality images and sound.
TRAI, in its recommendations forwarded to the government, said foreign investment in HITS should be in line with that of the telecom sector, and suggested an entry fee of Rs 10 crore and minimum net worth requirement of Rs 40 crore for the applicants to ensure that only serious players got HITS licences.

Promote competition
TRAI said that to avoid vertical integration and promote competition, cross-holding restrictions among broadcasting company, DTH licensee and HITS operator should be imposed.

“No broadcasting company or Direct To Home (DTH) licensee can hold more than 20 per cent of equity in HITS company and vice-versa,” TRAI said.

HITS is a satellite-based delivery platform for delivering multi-channel TV signals to cable operators across the country in the digital form with addressability features.

Uplinks
A HITS operator uplinks signals of TV channels of different broadcasters to his HITS satellite in the sky and cable operators can downlink these channels from the satellite for further distribution to the subscribers through their cable network in digital form.

Since the HITS satellite will have country-wide footprint, it will benefit about 60,000 cable operators who serve nearly 70 million cable TV homes.

A HITS operator will provide digital signals of TV channels only to the registered multi-system operators (MSOs) and cable operators only and not directly to subscribers, TRAI said.

To enable fast digitalization of cable services, no restrictions regarding transmission frequency band for HITS operation should be imposed, TRAI added in its recommendation. 

Recommending that no annual fee should be there so as to ensure level playing field with MSOs and to ensure that HITS service competes effectively with other delivery platforms, it said that uplinking from outside India should also be permitted at the option of HITS operator.

If TRAI’s recommendations are accepted by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, a licensee would have to roll out its services within a period of one year.

A provision of refundable performance bank guarantee of Rs 40 crore has also been made in the recommendations with the stipulation that it will be refunded on completion of roll out obligation and would be forfeited in the event of failure to roll out the service.

HITS operator would pay spectrum fee similar to that paid by the DTH operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.