Our Comments To The Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023

On 10 November 2023, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) released the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023 (Bill) for public consultation. In this post we share on overview of our broad comments and suggestions on the clauses of the Bill as submitted to the MIB.

Broad comments and recommendations

1. OTT streaming services should be kept outside the purview of the Bill:The draft Bill introduces the term 'OTT broadcasting service' and brings OTT streaming services under the same regulatory umbrella as broadcasting services such as cable and radio broadcasting. However, there are fundamental differences between the two modes of content distribution. Broadcasting involves transmission of content which is from one-to-many and simultaneous. i.e. the same content is broadcast simultaneously for all viewers. This is different from a unicast, which is one to one transmission of content. For instance, on OTT platforms, any viewer can