New Cable Operators Hathway and Den Announce Prices for Channels and Packs Under New Trai Scheme

Right around the deadline laid out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for publishing the new channel packs and pricing, some of the biggest cable operators in the country, to be specific three operators, Den Networks, Hathway Cable and Siti Cable have announced the new prices for the channels and the packs which they will be offering. Out of the three, Hathway Cable declared the prices at the latest and priced its free channels pack at around Rs 150. Another pack which contains pay channels has been priced higher than this pack.

Hathway Announces Base Packs and Other Pricing

Hathway has gone ahead with the network charge of Rs 130 which is the highest amount permitted by Trai as per the new rules. The cable operator will also charge Rs 24 as taxes. According to the new regime, a customer will be more in control as it will be upon him or her to pay the network charge for 100 channels and further choose which channels are in the subscribed pack. However, the regulator has not restricted the cable operators from making their own packs or bouquets as a starting point.

Therefore, on these lines, the DTH providers have come up with pay channel packs which are in the Rs 270 – Rs 400 price range. For example, a lot of Marathi channel packs which come with a large chunk of bundled free channels have been priced around Rs 270, while other language packs come around the price of Rs 300.

However, it should be noted that that the ‘packs’ arranged by the DTH operators will only be mere suggestions and that the subscribers will have full flexibility as to what channels they want to keep or let go of. But still, it is quite possible that many non-tech savvy subscribers will subscribe to the packs suggested by the DTH providers as it is. The results for the same will also be visible as the viewership for default channels will shoot up. Still, the 100 pay channels which will be covered under the umbrella of network charges will be solely based on the selection of subscribers. If the customers opt for a pay channel, then they will have to pay the particular cost of that channel over the decided Rs 154.

You can check out the new prices by heading over to these links: Hathway, Den Networks, Siti Cable. For D2h packs, head over to the company’s official website.

D2h Prices Base Pack at Rs 154 Inclusive of Taxes

With this new report, it is clear that biggest cable operators including Den, Siti and Hathway have abided by the new regulations laid down by Trai. However, the big DTH operators are yet to comply with the new mandates and they also have to publish their new pricing scheme.

On the same lines, D2h, previously known as Videocon D2h has also published two of its base channel packs. The provider has also priced its base channel packs similar to Hathway at the highest permissible limit of Rs 130. Combined with taxes, these base packs will be available to the subscribers for Rs 154 only. These base packs will be like the ones we described above and will act as suggestions only. Depending on the subscriber’s viewing habits, languages or other choices they will be able to call up the DTH providers and change the channels in the base pack. The pay channels will also be up for a subscription, but the charge for them will be levied over the base channel pack price.