Cable operators demand a level playing field

India’s shrinking pay-TV industry wants technology-neutral rules, echoing fights already underway in the US and Europe.

India’s cable and DTH operators are asking the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to rewrite the rulebook before it is finalized, arguing that the draft authorization guidelines under the Telecommunications Act lock in a disadvantage that a shrinking industry can no longer absorb. The complaint is not about new regulation itself but about who it applies to.

A framework built for one kind of player
Licensed private DTH and cable operators currently pay annual authorization fees, post bank guarantees, and meet mandatory carriage obligations. DD Free Dish, the public broadcaster’s free-to-air satellite service, carries none of those requirements, and internet-delivered linear channels and ad-supported streaming services sit largely outside the 2026 draft rules altogether. Industry bodies including the All India Digital Cable Federation are pressing the government to act on long-pending recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, among them lower authorization fees, relaxed bank guarantee norms, and a uniform programming and advertisement code that would apply regardless of delivery platform.

The numbers behind the urgency
The industry’s case is backed by a subscriber base in genuine decline. DTH subscriptions have fallen to 49 million from a peak above 62 million just two years ago, and revenue from linear television distribution dropped 8 percent to Rs 35,400 crore in 2025 even as average revenue per user ticked up. A rising ARPU on a shrinking base is not a sign of health, it is what a mature industry looks like on its way down, and operators want the regulatory cost structure adjusted before the subscriber losses go further.

How other markets have handled the same fight
India is late to this argument, not early. In the United States, cable’s subscriber base has fallen from roughly 100 million at its 2012 peak to about 66 million by the end of 2025, and the debate over whether streaming services should be pulled into the same franchise fee and regulatory structure as cable has run for years without a clean resolution; courts and the FCC have mostly narrowed local authority over cable rather than extending obligations to streaming platforms, leaving the imbalance intact even as cord-cutting accelerated regardless. The European Union took a different route. Its Audiovisual Media Services Directive explicitly extended a version of broadcast-style obligations to on-demand and video-sharing platforms, an attempt to build the level playing field India’s operators are now requesting. Even there, commercial broadcasters argue the directive has not gone far enough, particularly on advertising rules, and the EU is currently reviewing the framework again.

The pattern in both markets is the same one playing out in India: regulators tend to regulate down toward the newest, least-restricted platform far more slowly than legacy operators lose subscribers to it.

What happens next
The near-term signal for investors is what the ministry does with TRAI’s pending recommendations, particularly on license fees and whether streaming services get pulled inside the broadcasting framework rather than left outside it. Whether DD Free Dish moves toward phased encryption is a second marker worth tracking, since it would be the clearest indication that the government intends to close the gap rather than simply study it.
BCS Bureau