12704_SCTE_Broadband_Nov2016_COMPLETE_lowres

news from the scte

SCTE India is rising to the need for technician training to install, maintain and support quality cable networks in the country. By Lt. Col. VC Khare, Founder Member, SCTE India Mandatory Digitisation Of Cable Television In India

Cable Television in India is believed to have started some time in 1977 with the extension of VCR displays in hotels. It then graduated from wired extensions of satellite streams to viewer homes, coupled with cable streaming of feature films as video channels by cable operators. The activity remained totally private, as it was sourced from private funds. The screening of Gulf War and Satellite streams of STAR TV in the early nineties was popular in India and led to the proliferation of TV broadcasting as well as the popularity of the wireline-delivered service. At present, over 150 million cable homes in India are stated to be contributing to these services, delivering over 300 programmes (not channels, as they are loosely referred to, since several programmes in digital services are compressed

into one 7- or 8MHz RF channel in the 47-862MHz RF spectrum).

The announcement of India’s Cable TV Networks Regulation Act 1995 legalised the service, resulting in the emergence of MSO (Multi-Service Operators), although in India they provide only uni-directional television re-broadcast over HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coaxial Cable) over wireline networks. The estimated number of MSOs at present in India is about 6000. The MSOs run headends feeding the service over optical fibre to an interconnection near the cable operator. The O2E (Optical to Electrical) converter (not strictly a node, since the services are uni-directional i.e. without any return path requirement) is the property and responsibility of the cable operator (registered as the network operator and essentially

The estimated number of MSOs at present in India is about 6000.

16

Vol. 38 No. 4 - November 2016 Issue