The Union Cabinet has approved a revision to the extant guidelines for obtaining license for providing Direct-To-Home (DTH) broadcasting service in India, aimed at aligning it with the license fee regime applicable to Telecom sector. Specifically, the following decisions have been taken, which will apply prospectively:

• License for the DTH will be issued for a period of 20 years in place of present 10 years. The period of License may be renewed by 10 years at a time.
• License fee will be revised from 10% of GR to 8% of AGR. AGR will be calculated by deduction of GST from GR.
• License Fee will be collected on quarterly basis instead of annual basis.
• DTH operators will be permitted to operate to a maximum of 5% of their total channel carrying capacity as permitted platform channels. A one-time non-refundable registration fee of Rs.10,000 per PS channel shall be charged from a DTH operator.
• DTH operators willing to share DTH platform and transport stream of TV channels on a voluntary basis, will be allowed to do so. Distributors of TV channels will be permitted to share the common hardware for their Subscriber Management System (SMS) and Conditional Access System (CAS) applications.
• The cap of 49% FDl in the existing DTH guidelines will be aligned with the extant FDl policy, which provides for 100% FDI under Automatic Route.

The revised DTH guidelines will be issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

To refer to the press release dated 23 December 2020, click here.