NEW DELHI : The Government on Tuesday said that Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata would be covered by the Conditional Access System (CAS) by January 2008.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi denied that there was a shortage of Set Top Boxes (STB). The Government had more than 2 lakh STBs.

Cities with more than one lakh population would be taken up next, he said. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was looking into the issue of whether CAS should be made mandatory or if it could be voluntary.

With CAS in place, Mr. Dasmunsi said, viewers could choose individual pay channels and pay only for them or watch Free-To-Air channels without the STBs. His Ministry had asked the Finance Ministry for concessions to promote production of STBs. The requests of 71 private satellite TV channels for permission to uplink from India were at various stages of scrutiny. In a written reply, the Minister said the I & B Ministry permitted 222 private satellite channels to uplink from India and six TV channels uplinked from abroad were permitted to downlink in India.

In addition, 54 foreign TV channels were provisionally permitted to downlink in India, the Minister said.

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