Broadcast industry seeks TRAI NTO impact review as media landscape shifts

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) needs to assess whether the New Tariff Order (NTO), introduced in 2019, is delivering the outcomes it was intended to achieve, industry executives said, calling for lighter, principles-based and platform- and technology-neutral regulation as the media landscape rapidly evolves.

“The regulator has to start looking at what the impact of its regulations is and what they really want,” Rahul Vatts, Director, Corporate Affairs & Group Chief Regulatory Officer, Airtel, said at FICCI Frames.

The NTO, notified in 2018 and implemented in 2019, was aimed at giving consumers greater choice and price transparency by allowing them to pay for the channels they wanted to watch. It separated content and carriage, with consumers paying a network capacity fee to distributors and the MRP of channels or bouquets to broadcasters.


But the media market has changed sharply since then, with audiences increasingly shifting from linear television to OTT and mobile platforms. While the NTO significantly improved subscription revenues for the television industry, industry executives argue that higher prices under the regime, along with limited content innovation, have also contributed to the migration of consumers from linear TV to digital platforms.

“Over the last seven to eight years, what has happened has been the reverse. Viewership is now cluttered and there is too much regulation around how you package your products,” Vatts said.

He said regulation should be assessed by its consumer outcomes rather than merely by compliance with prescribed rules.

According to Vatts, regulation should give consumers greater choice, access to a variety of content and the ability to access it at the right price. He also called for greater flexibility for companies to experiment with products, pricing and distribution models.

“I think the time has come to really unshackle this,” he said, arguing that regulation should not impede innovation or customer experience.

Anil Malhotra, Head – Public & Regulatory Affairs and CRO, Affiliate Sales, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, said regulation needs to be technology- and platform-neutral as consumers increasingly access similar content across multiple delivery platforms.

He said the regulatory framework was historically designed to keep content and distribution separate to prevent vertical monopolies. However, telecom operators face no equivalent restrictions, allowing a single company to potentially control the customer, content and distribution network, creating new regulatory concerns. Regulatory forbearance has also contributed to this shift, he said.

Malhotra also highlighted the regulatory disparity between traditional television and internet-based services, noting that legacy media continues to face extensive licensing and compliance requirements, while online services operate without such restrictions.

He argued that regulators have increasingly relied on incremental changes instead of reassessing the framework in light of fundamental shifts in the media landscape. Rather than repeatedly introducing new versions of the NTO, he said, there is a need to address the underlying structural changes in the ecosystem.

Krishnan Kutty, Head – Entertainment Business, South Cluster, JioStar, said the industry itself needed to speak more cohesively with policymakers and regulators.

“I think we also have to take a little bit of responsibility for the fact that we have not been able to speak as a unified industry,” Kutty said. Broadcasters and platforms, he added, had often spoken “at cross-purposes”, particularly on commercial arrangements.

“The inability of platforms and broadcasters to speak with a single voice to the regulator or the government has caused significant harm to the industry,” he said.

Kutty also argued that markets are better equipped than regulators to discover viable pricing and business models. He pointed to the app ecosystem and OTT platforms, where companies have adopted a range of models, including subscriptions, free services, transaction-based offerings and premium pricing.

The bigger concern, he said, is regulatory uncertainty and constantly changing rules, which make it difficult for businesses to plan, invest and optimise. A consistent regulatory framework over a longer period, he said, would allow companies to develop and test innovative services and pricing models.

Vatts said future regulation should focus on broad safeguards such as non-discrimination, preventing predatory behaviour and ensuring access to content through obligations such as “must carry” and “must provide”, rather than prescribing how companies package and price products.