Licences of 20 MSOs cancelled

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has cancelled the licences of 20 Multi System Operators (MSOs) for not meeting the conditions for providing digitised cable services.
The ministry is working towards a switchover of the cable services from analogue to digital by 2014-end across the country.
The deadline for phase II of the digitisation in 38 cities ended on April 1 and the disqualified MSOs were not providing services under the new digital regime.
An official said that setting up a digital head-end was one of the conditions for MSOs to comply and the MSOs whose licenses were cancelled did not met these conditions.

MSOs in broadcasting are entities which receive the signal from broadcasters and then pass it on to local cable operators.