You are Liable to Pay Government Debts - Proposal to Levy a Licence Fee on Every TV you own

From Yesterday's Times of India

Govt mulls Rs 500/year fee on every colour TV
Himanshi Dhawan | TNN

New Delhi: Television viewing could soon be a more expensive affair. The government is considering imposing a recurring annual ‘licence fee’ of Rs 500 for each colour television set, and Rs 200 for a black & white TV, owned by consumers as a bailout measure for the cash-strapped Prasar Bharati.
Sources in the information and broadcasting ministry said imposing the licence fee on consumers is among a slew of options before the government — others include making TV manufacturers and broadcasters pay up — all or some of which could be implemented. Part of the money raised will go into providing government pay scales and other benefits for the 38,000-odd Prasar Bharati employees. Sources said the licence fee plan alone could raise an estimated Rs 23,871 crore.
The government can, in fact, impose such a fee by invoking section 17 of the Prasar Bharati Act as recommended by the Sengupta Committee report. A final decision on the issue is expected to be taken at the Group of Ministers’ meeting on Wednesday.
The GoM is also likely to consider levying a 10% licence fee on television and radio manufacturers to raise an additional sum of Rs 896 crore as recommended by the Financial Restructuring Committee in 2005.
BAILOUT BITE
Annual licence fee of Rs 500 for colour TVs and Rs 200 for B&W TVs being studied Cash raised through proposed levy could be used to bail out Prasar Bharati Licence fee plan could raise about Rs 23,900 cr every year Final decision to be taken at Group of Ministers’ meeting on Wednesday ‘Service fee’ will help raise Rs 800 cr/yr
New Delhi: A Group of Ministers is considering a proposal for a ‘public broadcasting service fee’ on the lines of the telecom sector so that all players in the field are required to share the cost of making television available nationwide on a nondiscriminatory access basis. This is likely to raise another Rs 800 crore at 5% per annum from broadcasters.
The final option is payment of an annual grant by the government to the pubcaster to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore. The government has been pushed to the wall on the Prasar Bharati employees’ issue. According to a Supreme Court order, the ministry is expected to resolve service-related matters of Prasar Bharati employees by August 2.
Ensuring government pay scales, retirement and pension benefits, facilities like government accommodation and health benefits is estimated to cost the public exchequer Rs 81 crore. The report on capital and financial restructuring of Prasar Bharati pegs its outstanding liabilities to the tune of Rs 2,503 crore, as of April 2005.

So just imagine this, if the Government tomorrow, can't pay the bills for it's Met Department or the Air Quality Control department, they may just levy a charge of Rs. 500 per annum for you to breathe air.. Funny...

GS

What does it take to clean the Dal Lake ?

I visited Kashmir when I was about 10 or so, and I remember it to being a heaven on earth. Then I was told, that the Dal is dying, today's clipping from the Hindustan times, shows Dr. Marc Stollreiter with a team of 150 people, (all volunteers), cleaning the Dal Lake, all it takes is passion, and boundries mean nothing.. The shame of India, being cleaned by a foriegner.. Doc.. keep up the good work.. and Thanks humbly for helping!!

GERMAN PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Marc Stollreiter (above) led a team of 150 volunteers in fishing out 2 truckloads of plastic muck from Dal Lake on Sunday. "We mustn't leave everything to the government. People should come forward. This lake is theirs," Stollreiter said.

IMDAD SAQI of Valley Citizens' Council, who worked with Stollreiter, said: "This is a slap on our, and our government's faces. We must wake up. The Dal is dying." The lake has shrunk from its original 58 sq km to 11.05 sq km due to encroachments and dumping of waste.

Courtsey: Hindustan Times, 18th June 2007 (Delhi Edition)

G

Should TRAI have a Larger Role in CAS / DTH Operators

A great discussion on India Broadband Forum, if TRAI should play a regulator to see that all DTH Operators, and CAS providers carry all signals, that means all brodacasters to compulsarily give signals to CAS and DTH operators, and Customer to choose, would love to see what comes out of it.

G

TRAI and ISP's to share Revenue

A bit late on my blog, but a serious news, TRAI and ISP's will now share 6% of the Revenue, (Did I read that right, 6% of the Revenue, and not Profits) WOW, and we talk about making this country internet Enabled, with forcing higher fee's and this Revenue Share structure, I think the ISP community of small rural ISP's, and small town ISP's will finish, I agree that there is a lot of Grey / Illegal Voip Connectivity happening in the name of ISP's, but sadly, raising the fee, and introducing a rev share is not the way to do it.. somone listen to me.

As reported in Hindustan Time on Thursday 10th May 2007.

G

Tata Sky Users, should you buy a Dish TV

A few days, back, when Tata took off some of the Zee stable channels, and Tata' service still not stabalising, a lot of people have come upto me and asked me a question, should we switch, or maybe get this box too. I thought the whole concept of going DTH / CAS was to bring your cable bill down, in my case it has taken it up, since the same content is not avialable (well 80% is same) but the balance 20% (Dish has the zee channels, has MGM, B4U Music, Total TV, India TV and Tata Sky has BBC Entertainment....and nothing), my bill is now going up to 300 for Tata, and 300 for Zee, so a total of 600, and when MTNL IPTV does finnaly launch or I mean is available where I Live, I will be down a 1000 bucks, for the same thing that I was getting for 200 a month.

Anyway, a good news for all you Tata Sky customers, TDSAT has announced that it is working on resolving the Pricing formula for DTH users, and also Issued a notice to Tata Sky, to start beaming down India TV and Total TV. Thanks ET, and good work people filing PIL's..

GS

DTH: Subscribers demand right to choose pay channels

When DTH actually became a reality, and CAS took a beating, a lot of people called in on my show on Radio Mirchi, and asked me on why they can't choose a single channel, or a set of channels that they want only to pay for on DTH, which is what they could do with CAS, After all they should all be comparable services.

Till a few weeks back TATA Sky did not offer any other subscription plan, while Dish had some plans, but under pressure started sellling only one Plan. Now both of them have some plans, but you still can't choose. The news that Subscribers will go through a PIL to get this, was expected, and May 7th's Hindu reports

Coming out against the packages of pay channels thrust by the DTH (direct-to-home) service providers on the viewers, the subscribers have demanded they should have right to choose the pay channels they want to see.

Power is'nt Delhi's right

PEOPLE DO not have a fundamental right to electricity, the Delhi government told the Supreme Court on Friday The statement - in a season of scorching heat and frequent power cuts - came during the hearing of a public-interest petition on the city's power crisis.

We are seriouslly going to the dogs, in this country, and we are talking of Commonwealth Games..

This is a scan from the Hindustan Times, May 5th Edition. Sadly could not find it on their website, but it is on the e-paper.

GS

OLPC @ US$ 175 a Piece

About this time, last year, I had written about the OLPC Project from Nick Negroponte. A news announcment today saying that the OLPC will now cost US$ 175 and not 100 put the whole project back into mainstream news. The price of 100 or 175, are both reachable prices to give IT to the masses, though the decision of now running Windows on the OLPC may not be such a great idea, maybe the announcement from M$ about 3$ a copy of Windows Starter + Student Office 2007 has something to do with this.

But it is still over all a good news, the only sad factor

New Laptop = 600$
Second Hand Used Laptop = 250 $
OLPC 175 $

I don't think we are making a lot of sense, the price of US$ 100 was a great attractive option to have this penetrate into real need locations.

GS

Broadband in India will be Free - Is it really True ?

A few days back, I wrote about the pathetic condition of Connectivity in India. The Recent news in Economic Times about India Broadband being free, and speeds upto 2 MBPS (God knows how this would happen), but if it were to happen, India Data Center Business is out for a Toss, if each home would be able to download at speeds in excess of 1 mbps and data centers not able to buy cheap bandwidth, there would be congestions. I think the government seriouslly needs to look at controlling Bandwidth Aggregation Prices, and Bandwidth Retail prices. Why not have similar Exchanges like Nixi, maybe privately run ? Any VC's out there.

GS

TRAI Announcement - What a CRAP

A few of you who know me personally, would know that my company runs a Data Center for Hosting / Co-Location and Dedicated Servers in India. We are amongst the two other companies that do this business Independently and are not ISP's. We have to setup a facility and buy our bandwidth, sadly I had all my hopes pinned on to Nixi, that the moment it will Go live, will not only bring down the prices of Bandwidth but also allow a faster interconnect route to other ISP's.

The reason for Data Centers in India being at such a low penetration is not only the critical power situation, but also the fact that INternet Bandwidth is very expensive, the current buy price of Internet bandwidth 1 MB 1:4 starts at about 5,00,000 (5 Lacs Rupees Per Annum or US$ 11,000 Per annum). Compare this to about 100$ in the US, this business needs a serious look.

When Nixi went live, I wrote to them for an interconnect, and was told the following

"Since you are not an INternet Service Provider, we will not connect to you, we only offer this service to ISP's, and not to Data Centers", on digging further, this is what I was told, that Companies like Yahoo / Google / Indiatimes etc buy STM's from large ISP's at huge profitable prices, if Nixi was to allow every one to connect, where would the ISP's go.

Does this mean that India by default wants to do all businesses, and not by leveraging the technology service aspects. Well Today's news in Business Standard, seems to be a mockery, that Nixi is under utilised, but if you wanted to connect your Data Center to Nixi, to get onto the National backbone, go sleep, or get your self an ISP Licence, which you can't for the next 3 years due to security and other concerns.

What a bunch of Crap.

GS