TDSAT dismisses IndiaCast UTV's petition on ORC on Dish TV

It seems that the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) has been busy all through the last couple of months listening to various petitions and settling disputes. The latest on the block is the IndiaCast UTV Disney vs Dish TV scuffle wherein both the parties met head-on with regards to an ‘on-request channel’ scheme that the platform has been running which involves the aggregators’ channels. Both petitioned the TDSAT for a resolution and judgment.

For information, if subscribers did not send an SMS confirming that they wanted the IndiaCast UTV channels, these would be dropped from their pack offerings, even as subscribers would continue paying as per earlier pack prices. Since subscribers would have unsubscribed, Dish TV would not be liable to make payments to IndiaCast UTV despite collecting the entire price for the pack (inclusive of the IndiaCast UTV channels).  This, as understood would lead to a loss of revenues for IndiaCast UTV.

In an official statement sent to Adgully, on condition of anonymity, a Dish TV spokesperson said, “The TDSAT has disposed off the petition of IndiaCast and has upheld the ‘On Request Scheme’ of Dish TV where the channels of IndiaCast will be provided by Dish TV to its subscribers on ala carte basis. On the petition of Dish TV, the TDSAT has also directed IndiaCast to stop publishing advertisements against the ORC scheme of Dish TV. Dish TV has also been allowed to run the scrolls publishing the ORC scheme by mentioning that the channels will be available on ala carte basis.” However, sources state that the fear that is likely to haul over IndiaCast UTV about the scheme would be that DishTV could have misused  it by making its channels available in both the DTH operator’s base and other subscriber packs and also in its separate offerings.

It may be recalled that the DTH operator and content aggregator have been scuffling it out for a few weeks, since IndiaCast had issued a rather atypical and eccentric public alert ad signalling the DTH operator’s subscribers that 21 channels might be disrupted from 1st January 2014 and will be replaced with movies-on-demand unless the subscribers message or call the DTH operator saying they want to continue receiving those channels.

Nevertheless, it remains to see whether this would be the last punch-up between the two parties or not.