Rapheal John-Lall

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) CEO Cris Seecha­ran says the agency is step­ping up ac­tion to en­sure that lo­cal ca­ble ser­vice providers com­ply with in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty laws.

Seecha­ran gave that as­sur­ance in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a pub­lic out­cry over a de­ci­sion by Flow to drop sev­er­al chan­nels from its line-up.

Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, the com­pa­ny dropped PBS, WGN, CW11 and MY33 be­cause it is not au­tho­rised to broad­cast those chan­nels. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in talks to keep broad­cast­ing pop­u­lar Bol­ly­wood chan­nel ZeeTV which was al­so due to be dropped from Jan­u­ary 1.

Flow was pe­nalised last year for broad­cast­ing chan­nels with­out the re­quired in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights. TATT took ac­tion to stop the unau­tho­rised broad­casts and said the fail­ure by ca­ble providers to ob­tain rights for for­eign pro­gram­ming was neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing trade ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Cari­com and de­vel­oped coun­tries.

In the first phase of TATT's ac­tion, ca­ble providers were or­dered to re­move CBC Toron­to, TLC, USA, CityTV, CBS, CW and VH1 USA from their line-ups.

Seecha­ran ex­plained: "We de­vel­oped a data­base where we would have on record all the chan­nels that were be­ing aired by all the broad­cast­ers and then we start­ed to work with the broad­cast­ers and con­tent own­ers. In some cas­es we had to iden­ti­fy those chan­nels where con­tent for which au­tho­ri­sa­tion was not ob­tained were be­ing aired, so it was ei­ther they got the rights or they would have to re­move the chan­nels. They were writ­ten to sev­er­al times in the last three to four years."

He said TATT fo­cused on two gen­er­al cat­e­gories of con­tent–those for which rights were avail­able but were not ob­tained by the providers and net­work chan­nels which op­er­ate free-to-air ser­vices.

"They were trans­mit­ting those chan­nels with­out hav­ing ob­tained the re­quired per­mis­sion. We called those the non net­work chan­nels," Seecha­ran said.

"Ini­tial­ly the au­thor­i­ties said all those chan­nels for which they do not have the rights will have to come off by the end of the year. Even­tu­al­ly it was be­tween 15 to 18 chan­nels. We held meet­ings with the broad­cast­ers last Ju­ly and Oc­to­ber. At the last meet­ing we in­vit­ed not on­ly the lo­cal providers but some of the for­eign ones re­lat­ed to the free-to-air chan­nels ABC, NBC Fox," he said.

The TATT CEL said a de­ci­sion was made was that by De­cem­ber 31, 2015, the non net­work chan­nels for which rights can be ob­tained should be re­moved. How­ev­er, TATT will "hold its hand" for now on the net­work chan­nels like ABC and NBC, he said.

In a pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry this week Flow said "like all oth­er ca­ble providers" in T&T, it had been man­dat­ed by TATT to re­move some chan­nels.Flow is owned by Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Plc (CWC) which is be­ing ac­quired by Eu­ro­pean telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant Lib­er­ty Glob­al in a deal that is due to be fi­nalised in the first quar­ter of this year.