NEW DELHI: Action is taken whenever a channel which has been given permission to uplink fails to do so within a year, the Parliament has been told.

Under the roll-out obligations for operationalisation of private satellite TV channels furnished under the clauses 2.5.1 and 3.5.1 of uplinking policy Guidelines 2011 and 5.9 of downlinking policy guidelines 2011, the applicant companies are required to operationalise the permitted TV channels within a year from the date the permission is granted by the MIB.

Minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore has said that whenever an instance comes to the notice of the ministry where the company fails to fulfil the roll-out obligation, action is taken against the company under the clauses 2.5.2 and 3.5.2 of uplinking guidelines and clause 5.9 of downlinking Guidelines which entails the forfeiture of PBG and cancellation of permissions.

After the permission for uplinking of a channel is issued by the ministry, the Wireless Planning and Coordination Wing, Department of Telecom, assigns frequency spectrum (bandwidth) to the teleport operators to enable them to uplink such TV channels,  Rathore said.

The minister said a total number of 1078 permissions had been issued for uplinking and downlinking of private satellite TV channels as on 30 June last, out of which 195 permissions (18 per cent approximately) have been cancelled so far.

Rathore said the typical value of bandwidth/data rate required to transmit (uplink/downlink) TV channels are calculated in two categories of transmission are:

TV Broadcasting with platform bit rates per channel (in Mbps)

Typical

SDTV with MPEG-2 3

SDTV with MPEG-4 1.5

HDTV with MPEG-2 16

HDTV with MPEG-4 8