Tata Sky, India’s largest Direct-to-Home (DTH) operator on Monday removed 25 channels from its FTA complimentary pack including News X, News 7 Tamil and India News Rajasthan. The FTA complimentary pack is a custom curated pack of Tata Sky that is offered to all subscribers for no additional cost. Crucially, the FTA complimentary pack channels are not considered during Network Fee calculation. While the channels that were removed from the FTA complimentary pack on Monday will continue to remain on Tata Sky, the users will have to manually subscribe to these channels on a-la-carte basis. Further, the channels that are subscribed by Tata Sky users on a-la-carte basis are subjected to Network Fee calculation.
Tata Sky Drops 25 Channels from FTA Complimentary Pack
The channels that are dropped from Tata Sky FTA Complimentary pack include India News Gujarat, India News Haryana, India News Punjab, India News Rajasthan, Bharat Samachar, Sahara Samay and Jai Maharashtra. The DTH operator also dropped numerous Tamil channels from its FTA pack including News 7 Tamil, Sathiyam TV, Kalaignar TV, Seithigal, Isai Aruvi, Murasu, Makkal TV, Peppers TV, Sirippoli, Polimer TV and Polimer News. News X, News World India, Sadhna TV, ABZY Movies, iLove Pen Studios, Patrika TV Rajasthan and Aaho Music are other channels that are dropped by Tata Sky from its FTA Complimentary pack. As of press time on Friday, Tata Sky offers 136 channels through its FTA complimentary pack.
Kalaignar TV, Seithigal and Polimer TV Part of FTA Basic Pack
It has to be noted that Tata Sky offers an FTA Basic pack that contains 100 FTA channels including the channels that were dropped from the FTA complimentary pack. The channels part of the FTA Basic pack include Kalaignar TV, Seithigal, Polimer TV, Polimer News, Makkal and Peppers TV. However, the FTA Basic pack channels are considered for Network Fee calculation. Tata Sky charges Rs153.40 per month inclusive of taxes as the Network Fee for the first 200 channels and Rs 188.80 per month for more than 200 channels selected by the user.