New Tariff Order 2.0: Apex court adjourns hearing to Feb 15

The Supreme Court adjourned the hearing on the appeal petitioned by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation along with a bunch of broadcasters. The appeal was against the Bombay High Court’s judgment on New Tariff Order 2.0. The Supreme Court bench of Justices UU Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat, and Bela Trivedi has deferred the hearing in the NTO 2.0 case to February 15, 2022.

Broadcasters have been fighting a legal battle with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against NTO 2.0 for over a year. As of now, with the green signal provided by the Bombay High Court, TRAI has directed broadcasters to submit or make changes to the reference interconnect offers (RIOs) adhering to NTO 2.0 by December 31. Earlier this month, TRAI also extended the deadline of the implementation of NTO 2.0 from December 1, 2021, to April 1, 2022.

So far, networks including, Discovery Communications, Viacom, SPNI, ZEEL, Star and a few others have already submitted their RIOs in the October-November period. The Hindu BusinessLine