Friday, July 21, 2006

Extension of Deadline for Cable TV Licenses

The deadline for Cable TV Licenses has been extended, please refer the following link for a detailed report.

Refer Link Extension of Deadline for Cable TV Licenses

Keep updating the latest as the weekend progresses and do not forget the action plan, see post below. After going through the comments we feel that no one is sure what to do. How about all of you meeting for a start, just an idea. You guys and gals have to come up with the plan together with the LBN Customers, if nothing works out for them today.

Good Luck.

15 comments:

Lisura said...

I personally do not think that the government will listen to our grievances. How many letters have we posted to the relevant authorities. Has anything happened ??? NOOOOO!!!!!

They have closed CBN with a prime abjective. That's to let their friends enter this business. This is not like changing a mobile network. Once you invest with the system of one operator you can't use it with another like in mobiles by changing the chip.

CBN reciver cant be used with DishTV and vice versa. So a subscriber will hardly switch opearators unless there is a big technical advantage like between comet and CBN.

CBN have brought in the latest technology (DVB-S) and caught up the market at an aggressive rate. 25,000 connections in just one year. If they operated for these 3 months on average they'll sell another 4000 connections but with the world cup the amount would have been double !

So the "Interested parties" as mentioned by the TRC (Now the cat had jumped out of the TRC bag !!!! ) wanted to stop this till they start their business.

Even on August 15th nothing will happen. It will take another 2 months to draft the amendment to the Rupavahini act. And the charges against the operators will also be filed on that date.

So that will be just another court date. Most probably it will get postponed again.

justavisitor said...

Govt to amend controversial TV tax

July 21 (LBO) – The government is planning to amend a controversial levy on imported television programs and commercials, with concessions for English programming, a senior official said.

“There will be concessionary amendments to the new levy. The proposed amendments have to be approved by President Mahinda Rajapakse,” R T L Weerasinghe, Senior Tax Advisor at the Treasury, told LBO on Friday.

Proposed amendments include a 10,000 rupee charge on every half-hour broadcast of foreign movies or serials, down from 75,000 rupees earlier.

There is to be no change in rates for dubbed programs, which are taxed at the rate of 90,000 for every half hour, with effect from July 16.

A one million rupee tax on foreign commercials is also to be brought down. Sri Lanka’s advertising fraternity had warned that most international brands would reduce spending on television because of this levy.

A formal announcement of the finalized new tax rates and other amendments to the levy is expected on Saturday.

The amendments follow a meeting between local broadcasters and Sri Lanka’s treasury secretary late on Thursday to appeal for exemptions or lower the tax to acceptable levels.

Tamil language programs are exempt from the tax, which will mainly affect English language viewers – about five percent of total audience.

Sanjeev Thurusinghe said...

Last week thier were some cable net works were sealed by CID. the news is office & the small recevers were sealed.but they have got the links from out side & operation is happenning. Well done. we appreciate your work.

Lisura said...

I'm not being negative my fellow bloggers ! We have to face the reality. Can you expect any mercy form this type of rulers.

Even after the court orders the Comet and SATNet is still in operation and no one is bothered to look into them. There were rumours saying that other small scale cable operators are selaed but they are also still operating.

Now we all know that the amendment of the Rupavahini corporation act is still not being done and the new licence deadline have been postponed to 15th August.

So it's very clear that no one in the business have these licences now.

SO WHAT'S BEHIND ALL THE OTHERS OPERATING AND CBNSAT AND LBN IS SHUT. PLEASE DON'T SHUT DOWN OTHERS BUT PLEASE LET EVERYONE OPERATE AT LEAST BY NOT GIVING NEW CONNECTIONS TILL THE WHOLE INDUSTRY IS BEING REGULARISED !!!

Lisura said...

GOOD IDEA DUDE. WE SHOULD FORM A GROUP LIKE "CBNSAT SUBSCRIBER FORUM" AND HOLD A PRESS BRIEFING. I THINK THEN WE CAN GET THE MESSAGE ACROSS. AND MAYBE WE CAN GET AN APPOINTMENT FROM THE PRESIDENT AND MEET HIM AND TELL HIM OUR GRIEVENCES.

I SUSPECT THAT THE LETTERS WE HAVE SENT HAVN'T REACHED THE PRESIDENT. MAYBE THE OFFICIALS BELOW WOULD HAVE HID THEM. THAT'S THE NATURE.

SO WHERE CAN WE MEET. CAN'T WE GET THE SUPPORT OF CBNSAT TO ORGANISE THIS ???? I THINK IT WOULD BE BETTER. THEY NEED NOT TO COME TO THE SCENE. WE'LL BE AT THE SCENE. BUT THEY HAVE TO BE AT THE BACK.

10 STRONG PEOPLE IS ENOUGH TO LEAD THE FORUM. AT LEAST 50 OR 100 SUBSCRIBERS SHOULD BE AT THE BACK.

POST YOUR COMMENTS !!!!!

Curious Kani said...

Guys, Count me in too. I'm about 80kms off Colombo.

I will give my full support to anything that gives me back my CBNsat.

Lisura said...

OK ! MEETING AT VIHARAMAHADEVI PARK NEAR THE BUDDHA STATUE IS OK. THE DATE WILL BE 27TH THURSDAY AT 5.30 P.M.

WE WILL INFORM OUR PERSONAL CONTACTS TOO. (WHO ARE CBNSAT CUSTOMERS)

AND THERE SHOULD BE A WAY TO IDENTIFY THE SUBSCRIBERS. SO I SUGGEST EVERYONE TO BRING A CBNSAT BILL TOGETHER WITH THEIR NATIONAL ID CARD.

STRICTLY NO STRANGERS SHOULD BE ENTERTAINED. WE SHOULD CONCERN ABOUT OUR OWN SECURITY.

Lisura said...

Yes ! I think at least few of us should meet in the first place immediately before everyones' meeting. Then something will go forward. I think the moderator will also have some contacts. I also have some which I got before.

IF YOU ARE OK PLEASE SEND ME YOUR CONTACT DETAILS TO cbnsat@gmail.com

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR CBNSAT ACCOUNT NUMBER. OTHERWISE NO WAY OF TRACKING WHETHER YOU ARE A GENUINE PERSON.

TV & Radio Sri Lanka said...

Please confirm the Meeting Location and time by email for us to post it officially on the blog. Is it going to involve only CBNSat or also LBN customers. Whoever is collecting the email address, please get in touch with us. We also have some email address that we can get across to you. The chain mail idea is also good to get the message across. The word should spread starting today.

Admin

jesika said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jesika said...

Hay why don't you buy a Dishtv connection( not the Hulugalla's one) Direct from India? you can watch 100+ channels including almost all the channels in CBNSAT. My friends also got it. The rental is 4500/= per year. what a chance. It directly transmit from India; so srilanka government cant restrict this.
what do u think?

Lightning_Struck_Tower said...

Popular Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay came back online Saturday night, after being shut down in a police raid last week and forced to relocate to The Netherlands. The raid prompted a response from Pirate Bay supporters, which attacked the Web sites of the Swedish police and government.

The government Web site was offline Saturday after a flood of requests for a file overloaded its servers. The file requested was a picture of Swedish Justice Minister Thomas Bodstroem, who has fought to make file sharing illegal in a country with traditionally lax copyright laws.


The Piratebay.org is a Bittorrent site which enables file sharing. The news story above is about a month old. It too was raided by police, shut down but fought it's way back online. PLEASE NOTE THEPIRATEBAY AND CBNSAT OPERATIONS BEAR NO SIMILARITY. However both scenarios which lead to shut down are somewhat similar. CBNsat was shut down for violating laws which didnt exsist. Piratebay was shut down for somewhat under defined laws on file sharing technology. In retaliation, piratebay fans launched DDOS attacks on governemnt web sites. Piratebay moved servers to a different country and came back online next nay (we all know CBNsat cant do that.)

LOL we could hit our govt web sites but our dumb officials wont even know weather they got hacked or not.

Read more on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thepiratebay

This is off topic but thought of sharing it.

Lightning_Struck_Tower said...

cbnsat has filed a case in the appeal court. I got the news through a friend and he said it was on rupavahini news today.

justavisitor said...

According to this
link

LTTE channel is going to broadcast from NSS6 satellite too and also they have approached TV Lanka to share their transponder capacity.

jesika said...

Thanks Guys for your advices.
I thinka you are right
I decided to wait for the court hearing.

Thanks