Impose 4% licence fee on OTT firms: Tata Play

Tata Play, the Direct-to-Dwelling (DTH) enterprise of Tata Group, has written to the telecom regulator, in search of a licence payment for streaming service suppliers such Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Tata Play has mentioned that whereas DTH gamers have to provide 8 per cent of their annual revenues as licence payment, digital streaming operators, or OTT gamers, don’t have to pay any such payment.

“DTH platforms, which distribute each pay and free-to-air (FTA) channels, simply as MSOs of cable and HITS platforms, pay licence payment on the price of 8 per cent of adjusted gross income (AGR), whereas the MSOs don’t, regardless of being safety cleared by MHA and licensed by the MIB. OTT platforms additionally carry most pay and FTA channels, along with unique content material, go direct to house, but they’re neither required to be licensed, nor pay any licence payment. Furthermore, TRAI rules are additionally not relevant to them. There may be thus a big disparity between the remedy meted out to the DTH operators towards different operators, regardless of providing the identical service,” mentioned Tata Play in its submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Tata Play has requested to take away the discriminatory licence payment remedy being meted out to the DTH trade, and supply a level-playing area by decreasing the payment from 8 per cent to 4 per cent for DTH gamers, and impose a 4 per cent revenue-share on different gamers, together with OTT service suppliers.

“A 4 per cent licence payment could also be imposed on all content material distributors, cable, DTH or OTT, to carry a few level-playing area whereas not being too harsh a levy on cable. It will even be income impartial for the exchequer,” mentioned Tata Play.

The Tata Group entity has additionally requested the regulator to exclude all revenues earned from non-licensed actions from the calculation of licence payment, as has been executed by the Division of Telecom for the telecom operators. The DoT had not too long ago introduced that solely income from telecom companies can be thought-about to calculate annual income share ending a 15 12 months lengthy dispute with telecom operators.

Revealed on

June 12, 2022