After Dish TV, Tata Sky removes lock-in period on channels
What's the story
In a bid to simplify channel selection for its subscribers, Tata Sky has removed lock-in period on all channels and channel packs on its DTH service.
With this, Tata Sky users can freely add or drop channels without the concerns of a lock-in period.
Recently, Dish TV also did the same, giving more freedom to its users.
Here's all about it.
Details
Other Tata Sky services have a lock-in period of 1-day
Tata Sky has removed lock-in periods for all channels and packs, except for its exclusive services.
Its services like Family Health, Fitness, and Beauty have a lock-in period of 1-day whereas Tata Sky Bollywood has a lock-in period of 30 days.
So, if you have subscribed to any of these services, you'll be able to drop them only after the lock-in period is over.
Information
Meanwhile, here's a look at Tata Sky's channel pack categories
In order to comply with the latest DTH rules, Tata Sky has listed the availability of channel packs and prices in five categories: Tata Sky Curated Packs, Tata Sky Regional Packs, Tata Sky Add On/Mini packs, Broadcaster Packs, and A-la-Carte channels. Read on for details.
Category #1
Tata Sky Curated Packs
Under this category, you first have an FTA Basic Pack which offers a mix of 100 SD Free-to-Air channels from different genres. Notably, this pack costs Rs. 0/month.
Further, the Pan-India Curated pack offers 14 different plans, starting at Rs. 179/month for Hindi Bachat plan and goes upto Rs. 745/month for Premium Sports English HD plan.
You also have 12 regional curated packs.
Category #2
Tata Sky Regional Packs
Tata Sky Regional Packages offer 33 regional packs covering nine local languages.
In this category, six plans come as FTA ones, providing upto 16 free channels.
In the paid category, there are 27 packs which start at Rs. 7/month for the "Gujarati Regional" plan that has four channels and go upto Rs. 216/month for Telugu Regional HD package that includes 21 channels.
Category #3
Tata Sky Add On/Mini Packs
In this category, Tata Sky provides 27 genre-based plans covering sports, music, movies, etc.
Here, you get only one no-cost pack called the "FTA English News" that includes 13 English news channels.
Paid plans start at Rs. 5/month for the Hindi news plan which includes 9 channels and go upto Rs. 162/month for an English HD movie pack that includes 12 channels.
Category #4
Tata Sky: Broadcaster Packs
In this category, Tata Sky gives access to all the channels which come under one broadcaster such as Discovery, Star, NDTV.
It has listed a total of 16 broadcasters and each offers multiple packs of their own channels.
For example, Star offers 72 different channel packs starting at Rs. 29.50/month while Discovery has a total of 12 channel packs which start at Rs. 7.08/month
Category #5
The Channels aka A-la-Carte
The Channels section lets you create a base pack by picking your favorite channels from Tata Sky's complete catalog.
Under this option, you'll have the freedom to select from 24 different categories, such as English movies, music, and news and individually pay for each channel.
In this category, you have channels starting from Rs. 0 (FTA) to Rs. 22.42.
Information
Tata Sky also offer a Flexi Annual Plan
Tata Sky has recently introduced a new Flexi Annual Plan under which subscribers will be required to pay an annual fee for their subscription (cost of monthly plan x 12) and after the 12-month period, one month's subscription fee will be credited to user's account.