The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has extended the deadline for submitting responses to a consultation paper on ‘Regulatory Framework for Groundbased Broadcasters’ .

The regulator said that since the stakeholders had sought an extension for sending their comments, the revised deadline is November 22, while counter comments could be submitted by December 6.

Mid October TRAI had issued the consultation paper on ground-based broadcasters as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) had requested them to look at the regulatory framework in the light of changing business environment and technology.

The advancement of technology has made it feasible for the broadcasters to provide their television channels to distribution platforms terrestrially also using ground-based technologies. Like traditional TV channels, which are uplinked and downlinked through satellite, the terrestrially transmitted channels may also be carried on multiple DPO networks simultaneously and the DPOs can retransmit them on commercial terms to the subscribers, a background note on the issue stated.

Therefore, there was a need to have a regulatory framework enabling use of ground-based technologies.

TRAI had forwarded its recommendations on the regulatory framework for platform services to MIB in November 2014, which included certain suggestions on ground-based broadcasters.

The Ministry felt that the context in which the recommendations were made by TRAI 2014 may have changed and they needed to be looked into afresh, TRAI stated while explaining the reason behind starting a new consultation.