KATHMANDU: The unpaid debt from Nepali cable service providers has forced a number of Indian television broadcasters, including Star, Sony, Zee, and Colors, to halt their programming in Nepal for the past week. Financial disagreements between Indian networks and regional distributors are said to be the cause of the outage; Nepali suppliers are said to be in arrears of over Rs 1 billion. The issue stems from non-compliance with Nepal’s new ‘À la carte’ pricing system, which allows consumers to pay separately for premium channels rather than a bundled package.

Gajendra Kumar Thakur, spokesperson for the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, explained that the disruptions occurred because the Indian companies refused to follow the government-mandated ‘À la carte’ pricing system introduced last year. This system requires consumers to pay for individual channels rather than a package, but the Indian broadcasters have not adhered to this pricing structure.

Nepali cable service providers, Net TV and Mega Max Digital, handle the distribution of these Indian channels, with Net TV distributing Star and Zee channels, and Mega Max Digital managing Sony and Colors channels. The broadcasters collectively offer 70 channels in Nepal. The ongoing issue has led to calls from Nepali television operators for the government to separate television services from internet services to address the problem effectively.