‘Best-fit pack’ to bring some pay channels back

KOLKATA: More than 10 lakh cable subscribers in Kolkata who have lost their pay channels may get some of them back on Sunday, thanks to the ‘best-fit plan’ that has been announced by Trai, till the migration to a la carte is completed by March 31. But the stop-gap package will have less than a fourth of the pay channels that an average cable home now watches. These channels, too, could start disappearing by mid-March, said multisystem operators (MSO).

“By Sunday morning, the best-fit package will be ready. As mandated by Trai, it will have a sprinkling of channels from across all genres — infotainment, movies, cartoon, entertainment and sports. But it will have less than 30 pay channels instead of more than a hundred that an average household watches,” said Mrinal Chatterjee of MSO Bengal Broadband. He added that the revenue-sharing arrangement for the stop-gap pack was not yet clear.


Leading MSOs like SITI Cable, Hathway and Manthan claimed they were ready with their best-fit plans. While SITI Cable and Hathway claimed that they had been offering a stop-gap pack since January, the rest said they were getting it ready. “We have had such a package ready for non-respondents since last month. It is the closest to what they now watch, obviously with a reduced number of pay channels. But for us, the number of such subscribers is less than 15% since the rest have been migrated to the new regime,” said a Hathway official.


But MSOs pointed out that the best-fit plan may slow down the migration process. “It will make subscribers reluctant to choose channels yet again. Secondly, a repeat of the switching-off routine next month may lead to confusion,” said an MSO official.