News

About 20,000 subscribers of a private cable television service will have to wait till tomorrow to know whether they can watch their favourite foreign programmes amidst a controversy as to whether the company has a licence to broadcast.

On Tuesday night, CID officers sealed the private station CBNSat and the company took the matter to courts.Colombo Additional Magistrate Gihan Pilapitiya has directed the CID to investigate the operations of CBNSat and another company SonicNet and report back to courts, after overruling a request by the CID for more time to carry out its investigations. The two companies claimed they have the legal authority to carry on their operations, but the CID argued that the companies did not have the licence to broadcast.
CBNSat provides its services primarily through a company-SonicNet Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd which was granted a licence by the Minister of Mass Media and Communications in 2003. Sonic Net claims this licence gives it the authority to broadcast. The company also claims that it gained approval for all its equipment from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.

SonicNet Technologies says since it works in collaboration with CBNSat, the latter does not require a licence to carry out its broadcast, which it has been doing since May last year.

Meanwhile SonicNet has made representations to TRC to hold an independent inquiry and restore the service pending such an inquiry as subscribers have been affected.

CBNSat officials charge that rival business partners had influenced the government to carry out the raid, coinciding with the start of the Football World Cup matches.

However, TRC Chairman Kanchana Ratwatte said CBNSat had only a vendor’s licence that gave it the authority to import, sell, install and maintain telecommunication equipment and satellite equipment but it had not obtained a broadcasting licence and therefore its operations were illegal.

CBNSat officials complain that the company has been inundated with calls from irate subscribers inquiring about the resumption of the service. To obtain this satellite service, a subscriber has to pay Rs. 16,000 each for a decoder and antenna .