TRAI Releases Amended Broadcast Regulation For Compliant Audit Regime

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Wednesday released the amended broadcasting and cable services interconnection regulations to ensure a fully-compliant audit regime.

During the consultation undertaken to prepare the audit manual certain comments and observations reflected some issues in the Schedule III of the Interconnection Regulations 2017, TRAI said in a statement.

Accordingly, a Draft Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) (Amendment) Regulations, 2019 was issued on Aug. 27, 2019.

TRAI on Wednesday issued the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) (Amendment) Regulations, 2019, after receiving comments on the draft regulation.

An Open House Discussion was also held on Sept. 26 in Delhi.

Based on the comments received and analysis of the developments in the market the regulations have been revised, TRAI said.

Schedule III of the Interconnection Regulations, 2017, has been amended mainly on -- scheduling and scope of audit, transactional capacity of conditional access system and subscriber management system, support for overt and covert fingerprinting in set-top-boxes, and watermarking network logo for all pay channels.

The scheduling has been so amended that the distributor of pay TV broadcasting services will keep a minimum gap of six months between the two annual audits and the maximum time gap is eighteen months, TRAI said.

The minimum transactional capacity required for CAS and SMS systems has been revised to five per cent instead of earlier 10 percent, it said.

Since implementation of the new framework, all distributors are deploying set top boxes that are compliant with covert and overt fingerprinting, it noted.

The authority has taken a pragmatic view on this aspects owing to already existing field deployments and revised the extant provisions in schedule III of the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) (Amendment) Regulations 2017, the statement said.

The amended regulations will help in establishing a fully compliant trust-based audit regime conducted as per extent regulations by the empanelled auditors.