I&B ministry charts plan for phase II of cable TV digitisation

Senior officials said in a meeting headed by I&B Secretary Uday Kumar Varma, the preparedness of the 38 cities in 15 states where cable has to be digitised on March 31, 2013 was assessed. Representatives of multi-system operators (MSOs) and others were also present.

"Now the ministry will be shifting its entire focus on phase II, for which some background work has been done already. We had written to the chief secretaries of all the states concerned asking them to appoint a nodal officer for digitisation. We have also received some names," a senior official told PTI.

While there are 38 cities which go digital in the second phase, Maharashtra with nine cities, Uttar Pradesh with seven and Gujarat with four are very crucial for the I&B plans. Officials say that the ministry was planning to learn from its experiences in Phase I.

"In Phase I, we had to revise our estimates of the number of cable TV households midway because of discrepancy in the data. This time we have asked MSOs to collect as accurate data as possible about the number of cable households and local cable operators in these areas," the official said.

I&B officials, however, said that they would base their estimates on census data as much as possible as they felt it was quite reliable.

"We are also preparing to increase the strength of technical manpower of our task force for digitisation. We realise that 38 cities spread across the country would require greater human resource," the official said. (More)