Cable TV price set to go up in Hyderabad

The Times of India
Cable TV subscription charges are all set to go up in the Hyderabad city with the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) deciding to collect an entertainment tax and a licence fee from cable operators from next month.

Cable operators in the city will now have to pay Rs 5 per connection as entertainment tax to the corporation. There are close to 1,000 cable operators in the city and by bringing them into the tax net, MCH is expecting to get richer by about Rs 3 crore per annum.

In addition, a one-time licence fee of Rs 10,000 will be collected from multi-system operators and Rs 5,000 from cable operators. "We are planning to hold a meeting with cable operators in a couple of days on this issue," MCH additional commissioner (advertisement and estate) M V Satyanarayana said.

The municipal corporations of Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada already collect entertainment tax from cable operators. Though the MCH was empowered to do so too by virtue of a government order passed in 2000, the civic authority did not bother to do so until now. Only 50 cable operators and multi-system operators had been paying taxes of their own volition, contributing about Rs 24 lakh.

The MCH standing committee took up the issue at a meeting last April and a committee of five MCH additional commissioners was set up to recommend the fee. The committee did so, after studying the system being followed in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. The corporation is now planning to issue notices to all cable operators soon urging them to commence payment of entertainment tax.

Cable operators said they would pass on the burden to subscribers. "We are already burdened with increased costs after many free-toair channels became pay channels. We have no option but to pass on the tax to consumers," AP Cable Operators Welfare Association president K Prabhakar Reddy said.