Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Sarath Amunugama's speech

On Channel One MTV News 1st there was a report about a speech made by Former Finance Minister Sarath Amunugama.

Did anyone notice the context of the speech. He spoke of the future of television. He said that in the future taxing of tv programmes will not be possible and he also mentioned about DVB-S. He said that in the future local tv stations will be replaced by satellite based broadcasters operating on the DVB-S DTH mode. At least we figure that is what he was trying to explain.

We could not get the whole text of the speech that was shown but he sure mentioned that DTH is the future of broadcasting. Well at least it is nice to know that at least one person in the government understands that DTH is the future.

By the way does he hold any ministerial porfolios still? Given below is a news report that appeared on Lanka Business Online (lbo.lk) website. Anyone who knows about any news regarding CBNsat please post them here as the days progress.

11 comments:

Lisura said...

I think he is the Minister of Public Administration & Home Affairs.

May be his friends might have applied for the new licence. That's why now he got to know about it.

Their plan is to keep CBNSat closed till their favourites enter to the market. Then they will be able to capture the market. That is the conspiracy behind closing of CBNSat.

Lisura said...

Hon. Minister of Public Administration and Home Affairs

Dr. Sarath Amunugama

Tel : 2662340/5362978
Fax : 2693304
Email : minister@pubad.gov.lk
Web :

http://www.pubad.gov.lk/home.php

cableguy said...

Just for fun I inquired about getting a new service from Multivision(Comet). Apparently they are not issuing any new connections for the next few months or so. Reason given was that they dont have the capacity or equipment to give out anymore connections.
I smell something fishy. Do you think Hulla and Abey threatened them too, in order to forcibly divert customers from CBNSat and LBN to SATNET?
Otherwise, I cant see what the big deal is about giving new connections. Wonder if a large number of CBNSat and LBN customers have already moved over to Multivision? Well if that is true, dirty Hulla will do anything to get that away from Multivision and make the money all for himself.

Any thoughts? Speculations? Conspiracy theories?

Lightning_Struck_Tower said...

Or maybe it's the govt's plan to close all TV stations other than SLRC and ITN. They'll allow all channels to convert to DVB-S, allow them to operate for few months, then close them all down saying that they are a threat to national security :p

About comet, i think they are just unable to give connection coz their decoders are way out of date and are not manufactured anywhere in the world anymore.

justavisitor said...

I read an article by Dr Sarath Amunugama in Ravaya news paper about 1 month back. In this article he had laughed at government decision to tax foreign programmes and mentioned about
DTH and satallite tv is the future for
tv and had written about governments lack of knowledge about these new technologies

bank_dude said...

I agree with Palitha. The way that CBN performed in last few weeks not encouraging at all. I believe that CBN screwed up the case from the very beginning. I hope all of you know about Nahil Wijesoriya's case. BBC couldn't sue the fellow. Likewise if CBN told that "they are not aware of any licences and if so we will obtain it", this might have end up in the very begining. As we know it is hard to sue a government. That is the truth.

Atleast CBN now go behind a minister like Amunugama and convince the president will help them a lot. This court case will drag for another 2-3 years. Once the media ministry put their concernas, CBN either have to object or have to agree it. It's a never ending cycle.

One other thing. Why don't we send a letter to Hiru FM about our concerns and tell them to conduct a program in "Rathu Miniththuwa". By the way Hiru FM also was on CBN sat too.

Lightning_Struck_Tower said...

Even google news lists Tamilnet as a news source alongside defence.lk. (in fact defence.lk is a low priority result in google news)

But what have the govt done about that? Tamilnet is operated from colombo. And the authorities are sleep blaming satellietes and CBNsat.

It doesnt take a big effort to launch a DDOS attack and silence tamilnet, the tiger propoganda machine for good. Similar operations are carried by the FBI, such as operation site down and operation fastlink.

But in srilanka we dont give a damn about what tamilnet says.In sl, New technology is poison. Let the tigers spread lies while the govt closes legit companies down :p

Lisura said...

The biggest joke is LTTE TV is displaying a telecom phone number as their contact number. I could even post it on the web. It's a Jaffna telephone number.

SO SRI LANKA TELECOM IS PROVIDING LTTE TV WITH TELEPHONE FACILITIES !!!!!!!

HOW DOES THAT SOUND ?????

Paranoid said...

Shit.... Really..? so... is the government gonna shutdown SLT for giving the LTTE the phone line...?

This sounds hilarious. don't the government know that it's a SLT number...? wonder Y..?

Max Payne said...

Isn't baluwardana going to do a program on tv lanka about slt supporting ltte?

Max Payne said...

I came up with this... Mr.Balu

TV lanka supports LTTE by keeping silence of the SLT phone given to LTTE .