Indigenous manufacturing of set-top boxes is part of the road map for the digitisation of the broadcast sector
By EB Bureau
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has taken several steps to promote indigenous manufacture of set-top boxes (STBs) for cable and DTH TV, keeping in view the huge domestic requirement. This is part of the road map for the digitisation of the broadcast sector.
ByDesign India Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, has successfully developed a conditional access system (CAS) for STBs under a project funded by MeitY in November 2015. Called the Indian conditional access system or iCASTM, it is available at a price of US$ 0.5 per licence for all operators and STB manufacturers in India for a period of three years (with free upgrades and feature enhancements), against a market price of US$ 4-5 per licence for competing products. The number of iCASTM embedded STBs have the potential to grow fast and provide gainful opportunities for domestic STB manufacturers. More than 50,000 STBs with iCASTM licences have already been deployed across the country.
To further facilitate the production of STBs in the country, a review meeting was held under the chairmanship of Rajiv Bansal, joint secretary, MeitY, on June 24, 2016. The meeting was attended by the officials from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, MeitY and members of the Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA).
A presentation on the various steps taken by MeitY to promote indigenous manufacture of STBs and the incentives available for this was made during the meeting.
According to CEAMA, the number of domestically manufactured STBs in India has doubled in the year 2015-16 over the previous year and has reached 9 million units. It is estimated that in 2016-17, the indigenous production of STBs will reach about 15 million units.
For further details, please contact S.K. Marwaha, director, MeitY (email: [email protected]); Bharat Arora, scientist-‘B’, MeitY (email: [email protected]) or Jayesh Dubey, VP, ByDesign India Pvt Ltd (email: [email protected]).
Source: Electronics India e-newsletter MeitY, July-September 2016
