TDSAT Steps In as Prasar Bharati's WAVES OTT Plan Hits a Regulatory Wall

Introduction

India's media industry has been living with a quiet contradiction for years.

On one side sits a tightly regulated broadcasting and cable distribution ecosystem — governed by licensing conditions, compliance requirements, and decades of accumulated regulatory architecture. On the other side sits the OTT streaming world — fast-growing, largely unregulated, and operating under an entirely different set of rules.

For most of the last decade, these two worlds managed to coexist without directly confronting each other. Traditional broadcasters stayed in their lane. Streaming platforms built their own. Regulators watched carefully but moved cautiously.

That uneasy coexistence is now cracking.

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, widely known as TDSAT, has issued a formal notice to Prasar Bharati — India's public broadcaster — following a petition filed by the All India Digital Cable Federation, or AIDCF. The dispute centres on Prasar Bharati's plan to onboard linear television channels onto its OTT platform, WAVES.

What looks on the surface like a procedural regulatory disagreement is actually something much larger. It is a test case for how India will govern the convergence of traditional broadcasting and digital streaming — and the outcome will have consequences that reach far beyond Prasar Bharati and WAVES.

What Just Happened

Prasar Bharati, the statutory body that operates Doordarshan and All India Radio, has been developing WAVES as a digital OTT platform aimed at expanding the reach of television content through internet-based distribution.

As part of this initiative, Prasar Bharati issued a Notice Inviting Applications — commonly referred to as an NIA — calling on linear satellite television channels to register and onboard onto the WAVES platform. The broadcaster subsequently extended the application deadline, signalling that the rollout was moving forward with intent.

AIDCF, which represents cable television distribution businesses across India, responded by filing a petition before TDSAT challenging the legality of the NIA.

The federation's core legal argument rests on the Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines issued in 2022. Specifically, it points to a clause within those guidelines that requires broadcasters to provide signal reception decoders only to categories of distribution platform operators that are formally recognised under Indian broadcasting law — including multi-system operators, DTH providers, HITS operators, and IPTV platforms.

AIDCF's position is that OTT platforms do not fall within any of these recognised categories. Therefore, allowing an OTT platform like WAVES to receive broadcast signals through decoder arrangements would place participating broadcasters in potential violation of their downlinking permissions.

TDSAT has now directed Prasar Bharati to file a formal response before the next scheduled hearing, which is set for April 29. Advocate Vibhas Srivastava is representing AIDCF in the proceedings.

What This Means for Your Brand

This dispute is not just a regulatory matter between government bodies and industry federations. It has direct and practical implications for brands, media buyers, broadcasters, and digital platform operators across India.

1. The regulatory grey zone around OTT is closing — faster than many expect. For years, OTT platforms in India have operated with considerably more freedom than their traditional broadcast counterparts. That asymmetry has allowed streaming services to move quickly, experiment freely, and expand their content and distribution models without the compliance overhead that cable and satellite operators carry. This case puts that asymmetry under direct judicial scrutiny. Whatever TDSAT decides, the outcome will accelerate the conversation about whether OTT platforms should be brought under a more structured regulatory framework.

2. Hybrid distribution models are the future — but the legal foundation is not yet built. The idea behind WAVES is sound and commercially logical. As television viewership increasingly migrates to internet-connected screens, a public broadcaster that can only reach audiences through traditional cable and DTH infrastructure is structurally disadvantaged. Prasar Bharati is trying to solve a real problem. The difficulty is that the existing regulatory framework has not yet been updated to accommodate the distribution model it is attempting to build. This gap between regulatory reality and technological ambition is a challenge that will affect every broadcaster and platform operator in India over the next five years.

3. For media planners and brand managers, watch this space closely. If TDSAT rules in AIDCF's favour and the WAVES onboarding process is halted or significantly restructured, it will affect how linear television content can be distributed through digital channels in India. Brands that are planning integrated campaigns across broadcast and streaming — or that are evaluating Prasar Bharati's digital platforms as part of their media mix — should track the April 29 hearing and its aftermath carefully.

The contrarian view worth considering: AIDCF's petition, while legally grounded, also reflects the instinct of an established industry to slow down disruption that threatens its existing business model. Regulatory frameworks should protect fair competition — but they should not be used to preserve legacy structures at the expense of consumer access and technological progress.

The Numbers Behind the News

The stakes in this dispute become clearer when viewed against the backdrop of India's broader media consumption trends.

India's OTT market has grown into one of the largest and most competitive in the world, with hundreds of millions of active users consuming content across multiple platforms. At the same time, linear television remains a dominant medium — particularly in smaller cities and rural markets — with Doordarshan maintaining one of the widest broadcast footprints in the country.

WAVES, if successfully launched as intended, would represent a significant attempt to bridge these two worlds. A platform that delivers linear television content through internet infrastructure could theoretically reach audiences that are moving away from traditional cable and DTH connections while simultaneously serving existing television viewers on connected devices.

The regulatory question this raises is not trivial. Traditional distribution platform operators — MSOs, DTH companies, and cable operators — operate under licensing conditions that carry real costs, compliance obligations, and infrastructure investments. If OTT platforms can distribute the same content without carrying equivalent regulatory burdens, it creates a structural competitive imbalance that the industry has every right to flag before a tribunal.

The April 29 hearing will be one of the most closely watched media regulatory events of 2026.

The brands.in Perspective

India is not the first country to wrestle with the question of how to regulate the convergence of broadcasting and streaming. Regulators in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the European Union have all grappled with similar tensions — and most have arrived at the same broad conclusion: the rules need to evolve alongside the technology, and legacy frameworks cannot simply be extended to cover fundamentally different distribution models without deliberate redesign.

What makes the Indian situation particularly interesting is the identity of the party on the progressive side of this dispute. Prasar Bharati is not a commercial streaming startup pushing regulatory boundaries to capture market share. It is India's own public broadcaster, attempting to use technology to fulfil its core mandate of reaching as many citizens as possible.

That context matters. TDSAT will need to weigh not just the technical legal arguments around decoder regulations and licensing categories, but the broader policy question of whether India's regulatory framework is equipped to support the kind of digital public broadcasting infrastructure that the country genuinely needs.

The AIDCF's concerns about regulatory parity are legitimate and deserve a serious response. But the answer to regulatory asymmetry is not to prevent digital innovation — it is to build a more coherent and future-ready regulatory architecture that governs all content distribution models with consistency and fairness.

That is the conversation this case should ultimately catalyse. Whether it does will depend on the quality of the regulatory thinking that follows the April 29 hearing.

Key Takeaways for Marketers

• TDSAT has issued a formal notice to Prasar Bharati following AIDCF's legal challenge to the WAVES OTT onboarding plan
• The dispute centres on whether OTT platforms can legally receive broadcast signals under India's current Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines
• The case highlights a growing regulatory gap between tightly governed traditional broadcast distribution and largely unregulated OTT platforms
• The next hearing is scheduled for April 29 and is expected to have significant implications for hybrid content distribution in India
• Brands planning integrated broadcast and digital campaigns should monitor this case closely for potential impact on linear content availability through OTT channels
• The outcome could influence regulatory policy for all hybrid media distribution models operating in India

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is WAVES and why is Prasar Bharati developing it?

WAVES is Prasar Bharati's OTT platform, designed to distribute linear television content through internet-based infrastructure. The initiative aims to extend the reach of Doordarshan and other linear channels to audiences who are increasingly consuming content on connected devices rather than through traditional cable or DTH connections.

Q: What is AIDCF's core legal argument against the WAVES onboarding plan?

AIDCF argues that India's Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines of 2022 require broadcasters to provide signal reception decoders only to formally recognised distribution platform categories — including MSOs, DTH operators, and IPTV platforms. Since OTT platforms are not listed within these categories, the federation contends that onboarding linear channels onto WAVES would place participating broadcasters in potential violation of their licensing conditions.

Q: Why does this case matter beyond Prasar Bharati and AIDCF?

This case is effectively a test of how Indian regulatory frameworks will treat the convergence of traditional broadcasting and digital streaming. The ruling could set a precedent for how all hybrid content distribution models — not just WAVES — are governed under Indian law, affecting broadcasters, OTT platforms, distribution operators, and ultimately the brands and media buyers who advertise across all of these channels.

A Defining Moment for India's Media Regulatory Future

Every industry goes through a moment when the old rules meet the new reality — and the gap between them becomes impossible to ignore.

India's broadcasting and digital media sector has reached that moment.

The TDSAT proceedings around WAVES are not simply about one platform or one regulatory clause. They are about whether India's media governance architecture is ready for a world where the distinction between a television channel and a streaming service is becoming increasingly difficult to define, let alone regulate.

The broadcasters, cable operators, OTT platforms, and regulators watching the April 29 hearing are not just observers in a legal dispute. They are participants in the process of writing the rules that will govern how content reaches Indian audiences for the next decade.

Whatever the outcome, one thing is already clear: the comfortable separation between broadcast regulation and digital regulation is over. The industry and its regulators will need to build something new — and they will need to build it together, with transparency, fairness, and the long-term interests of Indian audiences at the centre of every decision.

The clock is ticking. The courtroom is open. And the future of Indian media distribution is waiting to be decided.

Is India's regulatory framework equipped to handle the broadcast-digital convergence — or is the system already a decade behind? Share your perspective in the comments and keep the conversation going.

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