NEW DELHI: Even as most high courts extended the deadline for phase III of digital addressable system citing shortage of set top boxes, a total of seven local manufacturers are now producing STB.

This figure is almost double compared to the details given during the last meeting of the DAS Task Force on 16 February 2016.

The 15th Task Force meeting on 30 May was informed that seeding of about 41 million (4.1 crore) STBs had been completed.

However according to a representative of Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA), there was a lull in the market and no orders had been received in the recent past.

The representative said seven indigenous STB manufacturers had taken Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS) licenses and five out of them are in the process of implementing iCAS in their STBs.

He said 22 MSOs’ had placed orders for iCAS-based STBs. Twelve MSOs’ had deployed iCAS by 15 February, the 14th meeting had been told.

Meanwhile, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology is planning a meeting with the operators and stakeholders on 24 June 2016.

In the meeting on 16 February 2016 which was the first after the deadline for phase III covering all urban areas, it was claimed that the seeding of STBs by multi system operators increased from 6.91 million to 12.43 million between 31 December 2015 and 15 February 2016.

The Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS) had been developed by DeITY and will be initially available to indigenous STB manufacturers for three years at a nominal fee of $ 0.5 per STB. .