Sulekha Khaitan (name changed) of Madan Street wants to watch English news and Hollywood films on TV. Despite repeated requests, her cable operator only provides language channels on the prime band. He asked her to buy a set-top box (STB) to watch the channels of her choice.
Baguiati-resident Sumantra Halder (name changed) is a sports fan. He often finds that a sports channel he wants to watch has been removed from the prime band. His cable operator, too, asks him to get an STB to catch the sporting action.
Cable operators across the city are using the bait of wider choice of channels and better transmission quality to lure subscribers into buying STBs.
The cable operators procured the STBs in anticipation of the conditional access system (CAS) being implemented throughout Calcutta. The roll-out of CAS — under which a consumer must have an STB — has been indefinitely deferred forcing the cable operators to hard-sell the gadgets.
The operators hope that once subscribers buy STBs — costing between Rs 500 and Rs 1,500 — they will not consider switching to direct-to-home (DTH) services by Tata Sky and Dish TV. The imminent launch of DTH services by Bharti and Reliance has made the cable operators even more wary.
According to industry sources, cable operators have stocked over 50,000 STBs. Many of them are offering hefty discounts.
Subscribers are considering STBs mainly to watch their favourite channels. “I want English news channels but CNN has been off for a year and NDTV since April. BBC was restored only after I lodged a complaint with the MSO, Manthan. Zee Café and Zee Studio channels are not shown. The picture quality of Animal Planet and Sony Pix is poor,” said Khaitan.
Naseem Siddiqui of Princep Electronics denied pressuring customers to buy STBs. “A shift to STBs would ensure availability of all the channels along with better picture and sound quality,” he said.
Halder said his cable operator visited him with neighbourhood toughs a year ago to convince him to buy the an STB.
Industry insiders also attested to a trend of cable operators resorting to half truths to sell STBs.
