Telecom Lead India: Cable homes, which have not installed STBs in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, will face blackouts on 1 November, while Chennai has received 5 days of relief.
On 31 October, four metros have achieved 94 percent broadcasting digitization target.
TV viewers in Chennai who have not made the change, however, got some relief with the Chennai High Court granting extension of the deadline till November five for the process of digitization of TV signals.
But people in Mumbai who have not installed STBs did not get any relief with the Mumbai High Court refusing to grant more time to cable network providers in the city to switch to digital addressable system (DAS).
The Court, however, asked the union government to consider giving some relief to viewers during Diwali.
Union Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma confirmed that analogue signals in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai would be switched off on Thursday but Chennai would not be in the list because of the court order.
Meanwhile, Information and Broadcasting ministry said there was a huge surge in the installation of Set Top Boxes (STBs) in the metro cities, especially in Delhi on 30 October.
A total of 105,180 Boxes were installed, out of which approximately 65000 Boxes were installed in Delhi alone. This huge increase in the number of boxes installed in Delhi has taken up the Cable TV digitization to 95 percent in Delhi; along with DTH the digitization percentage in Delhi has gone to 97 percent.
While Mumbai has already achieved 100 percent digitization, in Kolkata the percentage of Cable TV digitization has gone to 83 percent; If DTH is also counted, the percentage of digitization in Kolkata has touched 85 percent.
In Chennai the pace of seeding has remained somewhat static. The Cable TV digitization in Chennai stands at 62 percent; however with DTH the percentage has touched 86 percent. The overall percentage of Cable TV digitization in 4 metro cities has gone to 91 percent by 30.10.2012. With DTH the digitization percentage has touched 94 percent in the 4 metro cities.
As per the data provided by the DTH operators the number of DTH subscribers in Mumbai has gone upto 7.53 lakh, whereas in Delhi it is 10.17 lakh, Kolkata has 3.20 lakh subscribers and Chennai has 7.11 lakh subscribes as on 30.10.20212. Number of DTH subscribers in the 4 metro cities has touched 28.01 lakhs.
