Cable TV operators mull a hike in monthly bills

Hamida, a resident of Dhaka’s Shantibag area, uses cable TV to view local and international programmes – the only form of entertainment available to her family.

She however noticed that some of the most popular TV channels such as Star Gold and Star Jalsha sporadically disappearing and reappearing from her cable package in the last few months. Hamida had to pay up the Tk 400 monthly bill regardless of those channels’ availability.

There is little room for expansion for the average consumers’ entertainment budget amid the steady price hike of almost all essential commodities, and on top of this worrisome trend, Hamida’s cable service provider recently told her that the monthly bill for cable will go up soon.

Her husband’s income has not increased due to the pandemic’s impacts, and the family now have serious concerns over how they will afford the ever-increasing cost of living – including flat rent, transportation costs, children’s education and daily essentials – in the coming days.

This is not an isolated incident, as a number of subscribers in different areas across Dhaka also told The Business Post that their monthly cable bills are slated to go up in the near future because the operators said so. The bill is now Tk 250 to Tk 500 depending on the region.

Babul Ahmed, chairman of Invention Technology Ltd – a cable operator in Malibagh, said, “The costs of channels, cables and other equipment have gone up. So, the cable operators are negotiating a deal with stakeholders, especially the distributors, to hike monthly bills.”

Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh’s (COAB) President and DG21 Systems Ltd Chairman SM Anwar Parvez said, “Most of the advertise-based foreign television channels are working on providing clean feeds [which means cutting out any advertisements] to Bangladesh.

“After this process is complete, Bangladeshi cable service providers and distributors will have to pay more to foreign TV channels. This additional cost will cause the subscribers’ monthly bills to go up.”

Industry insiders told The Business Post that Bangladesh has four distributors in the sector – Media Care, Jadoo Vision Ltd, Bengal Communications Ltd and One Alliance Ltd.

Among those, Jadoo Vision is the distributor for BBC and all Star channels – owned by India’s Star India. Media Care Ltd is a distributor of ZEE and SONY Entertainment, SONY Ten Sports and some other channels.

Speaking on the matter, Jadoo Vision Ltd CEO Kunal Deshamukhya said, “We have to pay 4-5 times higher monthly charges to international channel providers because they are losing advertisement revenue in Bangladesh because of the clean feed.

“However, the cable operators have not yet discussed the issue of increasing the subscribers’ monthly bills with us.”

Last October, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed that all foreign television channels must become clean feed to air in Bangladesh in accordance with Section 19 (13) of the Cable Television Network Management Act 2006.

At that time, Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud had told the media that the government does not receive any revenue from the advertisements aired on foreign channels, so Bangladesh is losing revenue in this sector.