Independent TV to Replace Existing STBs With New Ones Independent TV CEO and director, Vivek Prakash has said that the company is making a comeback with a new strategy for the market. This “well-defined” plan for Independent TV is being led by the company’s SSD and it will include the training of the ZD and the SSD who will go on to replace the existing STBs of the consumers. Independent has further noted that the returned STBs which turned up with the sellers or which are in stock with the SSDs will be repaired and used to replace the ones which the consumers are using now. Independent has further noted that it plans to complete this process by October 31, 2019. The company will start selling new connections from the month of September after resuming services on August 15. This news was first reported by Indian Television. It is worth noting that this announcement comes days after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) issued a direction to Independent TV to comply with the regulations regarding the refund of the amount to its subscribers facing disruption. Trai has also asked Independent TV to answer some of the relevant questions which it has posed regarding the refund of the amount to the subscribers. Trai Directs Independent to Comply with Industry Regulations In its list of questions, Trai had Independent TV to answer things like how many connection requests are pending beyond seven days after receipt of payment or subscription from the consumers, how many complaints are still pending from the consumers, in how many cases the refund has been made to the subscribers due to non-provision of services despite collecting money in advance. Trai also asked Independent whether any channel had been removed from the platform without giving proper intimation to the consumers and also whether or not the services had been resumed after the blackout issue. To recall, the company which was launched in 2018 was present in Uttar Pradesh and had 26 distributors in Meerut and Saharanpur division, and it had a total of 90,000 subscribers. Following non-payment of dues, the DTH service provided faced disconnection of signal from Antrix corporation.
