Network Capacity Fee (NCF)

According to TRAI’s recent rules for broadcasters, all the Indian DTH providers has to allow their subscribers freedom to create their own customized DTH Pack so that consumer will pay only for the channels they want to watch.

The customers, however, have to pay a fixed base tariff which TRAI calls out NCF, in brief, “Network Capacity Fee”. What is it? What are the fee structures?

What is Network Capacity Fee (NCF)?

“Network Capacity Fee” means the amount, excluding taxes, payable by a subscriber to the Distributor of television channels for distribution of TV channels subscribed by that subscriber and it does not include subscription fee for pay channel or bouquet of pay channels, as the case may be.

It is a kind of monthly fixed charge for provisioning of the TV Channels.

What are the fee structures?

TRAI has prescribed a ceiling of Rs. 130/- per month (excl. taxes) for use of network capacity of a distributor for providing 100 SD channels to a subscriber.

On the other hand, an HD channel is treated as 2 SD channels for the purpose of determining the Network Capacity Fee.

Any subscriber who opts for more than 100 channels can choose additional channels in each slab of 25 channels at a maximum price of @ Rs. 20/slab.

UPDATE: The base slab of 100 channels increased to 200 channels with same fee.