Tuesday, Apr 01, 2003
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Tamil Nadu-Chennai
By Karthik Subramanian
An irritating fallout of the crisis for most residents has been non-availability of some popular channels after STAR group delinked service with Sumangali Cable Vision last Saturday. While the STAR channels, including STAR Movies, STAR World, Discovery Channel, STAR Vijay and STAR Plus, have gone off air in several parts of the city, there are also areas where KTV and Sun News are not available. People who are not receiving KTV, Gemini, Sun News and Udaya TV can infer that they are now falling under operations of Hathway Cable, which started functioning independently since Saturday. Areas where Hathway Cable now operate include parts of Adyar, Thiruvanmiyur, Besant Nagar, R.A.Puram, Royappetah, Triplicane, Mylapore, Chetpet, Kilpauk, Anna Nagar, Perambur, Jawahar Nagar, Madhavaram, Shastri Nagar, Indira Nagar and Choolai. Here people have been able to watch the popular talk show, "Kathai Alla Nijam" in STAR Vijay but were equally disappointed at missing out "Comedy Time" now being shown on KTV. When contacted, several cable operators fought shy of being quoted under circumstances but were quick to say that it was a "lose all situation". "So far, we have been able to demarcate regions for operators. But with two MSOs operating independently now and both offering their unique bouquet of channels, we fear there will be law and order problems", a top operator said. New operators have already started cabling works at Arumbakkam and Tiruvanmiyur, on behalf of rival MSOs. The bad news, however, is that the blacking out of popular channels might not reduce the monthly subscription fee by a large amount. " We have not been charging all subscribers the STAR tariff of Rs. 35, because all the channels are not watched. We have under quoted the number of subscribers to STAR to ensure that the monthly bill is maintained at Rs. 200 only", said one operator. An official statement from the cable TV operators' associations is expected soon but the general feeling is that the big companies need not have dragged their fight on to `consumer turf'.
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