On April 6, 2026, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India released a consultation paper on a regulatory framework for Application-based Linear Television Distribution (ALTD) services, an umbrella term it coined to capture Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels and other app-delivered linear TV. Acting on a reference from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, TRAI asked whether platforms that pipe scheduled channels through smart-TV apps, mobile downloads and browsers should carry the same authorisation, Programme Code, Advertising Code and pricing-parity obligations as licensed cable and DTH distributors. Comments closed May 11; counter-comments, originally due May 18, were extended to May 25 after stakeholders cited the subject's complexity.
The consultation has split the industry along a predictable fault line, and the stakes are real. The central question is not whether scheduled internet video looks like television — it plainly does — but whether the regulatory apparatus built for scarce spectrum and gatekept carriage should be ported wholesale to the open internet.
The case for parity is not frivolous
The strongest argument for regulation deserves a fair hearing. Licensed DTH and cable operators labour under tariff orders, mandatory carriage and quality-of-service rules, channel-registration requirements and content-code enforcement — while FAST platforms distribute functionally identical linear channels free of those costs. Zee has pressed TRAI for technology-neutral regulation: identical obligations regardless of whether a channel reaches the viewer over satellite, cable or fibre. Airtel went further, framing the gap as "regulatory arbitrage" and arguing that if a channel is free on a FAST app it should not remain a paid channel on DTH. Dish TV called the FAST space a "regulatory vacuum," and Tata Play offered TRAI a clean binary: regulate every distribution technology equally, or deregulate them all. Consumer-protection and grievance-redressal gaps on ad-supported apps are genuine. A regulator that ignored a distribution channel now reaching tens of millions of homes would be abdicating, not restraining itself.
But the cure proposed is leveling-up, and that is the wrong direction
The broadcasters' framing quietly assumes the burdens on legacy distribution are the correct baseline to which everyone else should be raised. They are not. Carriage rules, tariff caps and authorisation regimes exist because cable and DTH operate gatekept, capacity-constrained networks where a distributor can foreclose a broadcaster. FAST has no such bottleneck: any channel can list on Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels or a standalone app without negotiating carriage on a finite pipe. The market failure that justifies must-carry and tariff control simply is not present at the application layer. The honest version of "technology-neutral" treatment is convergence downward — relieving legacy distributors of obsolete obligations — not exporting them to a market that never needed them.
There is also a jurisdictional problem the broadcasters skate past. JioStar and Culver Max note that FAST operates "entirely at the application layer of the internet," riding telecom infrastructure it does not own, and that Parliament deliberately excluded OTT services from the Telecommunications Act, 2023. The IAMAI argues TRAI lacks jurisdiction over services delivered over the open internet rather than a licensed network. Classifying scheduled internet content as "broadcasting" risks a definition that sweeps in YouTube live streams, webinars and social feeds — a slope TRAI should be wary of greasing.
Content already has a regime; quotas would be the real overreach
Much of the parity case dissolves on inspection because the content itself is not unregulated. The Programme and Advertising Codes attach to channels and the IT Rules, 2021 already layer a three-tier grievance and self-regulation structure over digital content. Extending a fresh carriage licence to the app distributing those channels adds compliance cost without a matching consumer benefit.
The deeper risk lies one step beyond this consultation: the temptation to bolt local-content quotas onto streaming once an authorisation hook exists. The EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive already requires on-demand catalogues to carry at least a 30% share of European works with guaranteed prominence, and France compels streamers to reinvest a fifth or more of domestic revenue into local production. These mandates raise costs, narrow catalogues and have not demonstrably out-performed the organic, market-driven explosion of Indian-language content that platforms already commission because audiences demand it. India's regional-language FAST channels are multiplying without a quota; a mandate would substitute a bureaucrat's catalogue ratio for a viewer's remote control.
A proportionate path
The scale is undeniable — connected-TV households crossed roughly 60 million by end-2025, overtaking a shrinking pay-DTH base of about 57 million, and CTV ad spend is racing toward ₹8,000 crore. That growth is precisely why a heavy hand is risky. A nascent, investment-hungry CTV ecosystem is the worst candidate for licence fees, must-carry and tariff control.
TRAI can serve consumers without freezing the market. A light-touch registration (not a carriage licence), enforcement of the existing content and advertising codes against the channels themselves, transparent grievance redressal, and a sunset review of legacy DTH obligations would close the genuine accountability gaps the broadcasters identify — while leaving the open-internet distribution layer free to grow. Parity achieved by lifting everyone into a cable-era straitjacket would be a textbook case of regulating the future to protect the past.