The West Delhi Cable Operators Association has written to the Information and Broadcasting Minister and the Home Minister, seeking police protection, as they in anticipate a “violent reaction” from television consumers once the analogue signals are switched off in the wake of digitisation.
In its letter, the association said that the last mile cable operators would have difficulties in dealing with lakhs of consumers, since the Ministry and other stakeholders had decided to switch off analogue signals progressively for a short time from Wednesday to speed up digitisation.
“The set-top boxes, which are being forced upon the consumers, are of the cheapest variety without any features such as video-on-demand, Internet, games with no maintenance facilities. Multi System Operators are asking them to pay more for the set-top boxes now and some are selling them for as much as Rs 2,000 and Rs 6,000 for HD boxes. Millions of poor consumers do not have good quality television sets to support digital feed. They cannot use set-top boxes unless they spend more on a new television set that they are resisting,” the letter said, listing the various reasons that could lead to a “violent reaction” from the public.