TimesView Some amount of disruption is to be expected during any regime change. But what we have seen over the past few weeks goes beyond that. Harassment of subscribers must be avoided at all costs. KOLKATA: More than 10 lakh cable subscribers in Kolkata who have lost their pay channels may get some of them back on Sunday, thanks to the ‘best-fit plan’ that has been announced by Trai, till the migration to a la carte is completed by March 31. But the stop-gap package will have less than a fourth of the pay channels that an average cable home now watches. These channels, too, could start disappearing by mid-March, said multisystem operators (MSO).“By Sunday morning, the best-fit package will be ready. As mandated by Trai, it will have a sprinkling of channels from across all genres — infotainment, movies, cartoon, entertainment and sports. But it will have less than 30 pay channels instead of more than a hundred that an average household watches,” said Mrinal Chatterjee of MSO Bengal Broadband. He added that the revenue-sharing arrangement for the stop-gap pack was not yet clear.Leading MSOs like SITI Cable, Hathway and Manthan claimed they were ready with their best-fit plans. While SITI Cable and Hathway claimed that they had been offering a stop-gap pack since January, the rest said they were getting it ready. “We have had such a package ready for non-respondents since last month. It is the closest to what they now watch, obviously with a reduced number of pay channels. But for us, the number of such subscribers is less than 15% since the rest have been migrated to the new regime,” said a Hathway official.But MSOs pointed out that the best-fit plan may slow down the migration process. “It will make subscribers reluctant to choose channels yet again. Secondly, a repeat of the switching-off routine next month may lead to confusion,” said an MSO official.

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