How Much do Pakistanis Pay for Indian Channels Every Month?
Recently, Pakistan’s DTH project, which was to be revolutionary for satellite television and media in Pakistan, was closed.
As it stands, according to sources, there are close to 3 million Indian DTH boxes in Pakistan, and Pakistanis pay billions of rupees each month for Indian channels. With that, you can well imagine the volume of money being directly paid to India.
According to reports from last year, the State Bank of Pakistan has banned online payments for Indian Electronic Media content. Due to that, direct payment from Pakistan is not possible. The customer can, however, pay indirectly from other countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
In general, Indian content was already prohibited from Pakistani television channels, however, this ban included payments for Direct to Home (DTH) services. Despite that, millions, as stated above, still continue to exist in Pakistan. With that, one has to question exactly how effective has the ban been?
According to sources from last year, an official from one of the biggest local channel companies, which subscribes to some Indian content, responded to a question that direct payments from Pakistan were not necessary. They used means from UAE instead and currently, there are 1.2 million Pakistanis in the UAE, with 400,000 of them being in Dubai alone.
In the past, too, there have been reports of PEMRA taking strict action against those who continued to use Indian DTHs, with one story even telling of a burning of Indian DTH equipment. Ultimately, the only conclusion one is able to come to is how much the general citizen craves this content.
So what could a solution be? These days, with the internet, in general one doesn’t necessarily need an Indian DTH to view Indian dramas. The only viable solution – create content such that people stop wanting to watch content. Banning YouTube and the like won’t much work either – since services like VPNs exist. As such, we as a nation have to stop watching and wanting this content, and watch our own instead, for the sake of our own nation and integrity.
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