A Rulebook for Yesterday's Distribution Map
On July 24, 2026, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's public consultation window is closing on the draft Telecommunications (Television, Radio and Associated Services) Rules, 2026 — comments are due by July 27. The draft folds television uplinking and downlinking, Direct-to-Home operators, Headend-in-the-Sky platforms, private FM and community radio, and IPTV under a single authorisation regime governed by the Telecommunications Act, 2023, replacing a patchwork of legacy guidelines (MIB, Draft Rules notice). Existing licensees can migrate voluntarily or keep operating under old permissions until they do — a sensible transition mechanism that avoids disrupting live broadcast operations.
What the rules do not touch is the more consequential part of India's video ecosystem: OTT streaming platforms, Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels, and Application-based Linear Television Distribution (ALTD) apps — the software that delivers live, linear-style channel bundles over the open internet rather than dedicated broadcast infrastructure. The only internet-adjacent service the draft brings in is IPTV delivered over a closed, managed network by an authorised operator — a narrow category that excludes the smart-TV and mobile apps most Indians now use to watch free ad-supported channels.
Why the Gap Is Deliberate, Not an Oversight
This is not a drafting gap. It is a jurisdictional handoff. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 itself deliberately dropped OTT communication services from its definition of "telecommunication services" after industry pushback on the 2022 draft bill, leaving online curated content governed instead under the IT Act, 2000 and the 2021 Digital Media Ethics Code. Separately, the Ministry sent TRAI a formal reference under Section 11(1)(a) of the TRAI Act, 1997 on December 15, 2025 asking it to recommend a framework specifically for ALTD and FAST services. TRAI answered with Consultation Paper No. 02/2026, released April 6, 2026, seeking views on authorisation terms, carriage obligations, and consumer-protection rules for app-based linear distribution; comments closed May 11 and counter-comments May 25, drawing 35 submissions and 11 counter-comments from broadcasters, telcos, industry bodies and consumer groups (TRAI Consultation Paper).
The honest reading is that MIB chose to consolidate what it could regulate cleanly under existing legacy guidelines now, and park the harder, contested question — should internet-delivered linear television be regulated like cable and DTH — with the specialist regulator running an active process. That is more disciplined than the abandoned 2023 Broadcasting Services Bill, which tried to bundle OTT content obligations into the same instrument and collapsed under the weight of the resulting backlash (BestMediaInfo analysis).
Steelmanning the Case for Bringing FAST and ALTD In
Traditional broadcasters and DTH operators have a genuine grievance, and it deserves a fair hearing before it's dismissed. FAST and ALTD platforms increasingly resemble television distributors in every way that matters to a viewer — bundled linear channels, scheduled programming, advertising inventory — but they carry none of the licensing, carriage, or compliance obligations that legacy players must meet (Storyboard18). A cable operator pays carriage fees, meets programme-code obligations, and submits to audience-measurement audits; an ALTD app competing for the same eyeballs and ad rupees currently does none of that. Regulatory parity is not an unreasonable ask when two products are functionally identical to the consumer.
Why Folding Them Into Broadcasting Rules Would Be a Mistake
But the parity argument proves too much if it's used to import the entire broadcasting compliance stack wholesale. As IAMAI told TRAI, FAST and ALTD platforms "neither own nor control transmission infrastructure, spectrum or last-mile delivery networks" — they ride on a consumer's own ISP connection, which is precisely the technical distinction Parliament preserved when it excluded OTT from the Telecommunications Act's telecom-services definition in 2023 (Medianews4u, IAMAI submission). Licensing regimes built for spectrum-scarce, infrastructure-heavy distribution — carriage negotiations, must-carry rules, channel-placement fees — exist because physical capacity is finite. An app has no such constraint; a viewer can install five FAST apps with zero marginal infrastructure cost to anyone. Applying DTH-style authorisation to that layer would raise fixed compliance costs for exactly the segment of the market — smaller, ad-funded, often bootstrapped streaming apps — least able to absorb them, likely narrowing rather than diversifying consumer choice.
Critically, this content is not unregulated today. It already sits under MeitY and MIB's own IT Rules, 2021 framework, with grievance-redressal and takedown obligations. Layering a second, broadcasting-style authorisation on top would be duplicative rather than protective — regulating the same conduct twice through two different ministries answering to two different statutes.
The Right Sequencing, If MIB Holds the Line
The pending TRAI process is the correct venue to resolve this, precisely because it can weigh technical distinctions — spectrum use, last-mile control, market power — that a blanket broadcasting rulebook cannot. The risk is not that MIB excluded OTT from these particular rules; it is what TRAI recommends next, and whether that recommendation preserves the internet-versus-infrastructure distinction Parliament drew in 2023, or quietly erases it under pressure from incumbent broadcasters who would rather compete through regulation than through better apps. Given how narrowly the 2023 Act's OTT carve-out survived the earlier bill fight, regulators should resist re-importing broadcasting-style licensing through the back door of an ALTD framework — proportionate obligations on genuine points of parity (advertising standards, grievance redressal, ratings inclusion) make sense; carriage fees and spectrum-era authorisation do not.