ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has seized 11,651 illegal Direct to Home (DTH) and C-line equipment from various parts of the country during past two years. According to the recently released PEMRA Annual Report, it initiated a country-wide drive to curb the penetration of illegal DTH in the county in October 2016.
Since then, the PEMRA teams along with staff of Customs Intelligence and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) raided 386 shops and warehouses, conducted surprise inspections of 3,682 cable networks, and seized 151 illegal head-ends.
It is worth a mention that head-end is a control centre in a cable television system where various signals are brought together and monitored before being introduced into the cable network.
Since October 2016 to end of last year 581 cable operators were found involved in violation of laws while 1,260 illegal Indian DTH receivers were bulldozed. During this period, the PEMRA issued show cause notices to 188 cable operators while 40 illegal Indian channels were also off-aired.
Major source of illegal satellite television channels is abundance of smuggled DTH in the market and PEMRA has been striving hard to coordinate with Customs Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Revenue and Federal Investigation Agency to take stringent steps to overcome proliferation of illegal DTH in the market, so that he menace of foreign channels which does not conform to Pakistani culture, could be eliminated.
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