The HITS policy announced was expected by many within the sector to hasten the process of digitising India's vast analogue network on account of its cheaper roll out costs. The suspension of services by WWIL will definitely be a setback to this process. WWIL had been operating the HITS platform for about a year prior to the guideline announcement, and had stated that customer acquisition and network expansion had been placed on the back-burner due to a lack of clear policies governing content acquisition and carriage fees paid to broadcasters. The official policy guidelines announced in November 2009 were expected to smoothe out many of the issues faced by the operator. However, company sources have been vocal of their dissatisfaction?with the guidelines - indicating that several key elements of the policy governing supply of content and channels by broadcasters to the HITS operators were missing. Regulations in India dictate that?broadcasters have to make their channels available to all pay satellite and digital cable operators on a non-discriminatory basis, with per subscriber carriage fees payable to the broadcasters also subject to price caps. As a result, both pay satellite and digital cable operators have been able to ensure their access to content at reasonable rates. These key aspects of the policy are, however, missing?from the HITS guidelines. As a result, WWIL states that broadcasters have either refused to supply channels, or demanded high carriage rates, despite the platform offering complete transparency with respect to subscriber numbers. Despite the loss of its HITS service, WWIL states that it does not foresee a significant churn in subscribers. Company sources indicated that plans are in place to offer alternative analogue and digital cable services to existing subscribers, and that additional digital cable head ends may be deployed in certain areas where they have a large subscriber base. WWIL has also indicated that it may restart services if the government introduces amended guidelines that are conducive to service operation. On a positive note, the Indian government has announced that it is looking to introduce a 'sunset clause' for analogue cable in India. Currently, a 2017 switch-off has been cited as being most likely, with analogue networks in India's cities being switched off on a gradual basis. However, concrete plans are yet to be revealed, and given the slow pace of movement on regulatory issues, we believe that it is too early to envisage 2017 as a realistic target. Following WWIL's announcement, Screen Digest has revised its forecasts for digital cable penetration in India.