The Southern Development Authority (SDA) owns the broadcast license for Ruhuna 2001 Multivision (Pvt) Limited, used to provide pay television service Comet Cable in Sri Lanka.
The SDA is also a 50 percent shareholder in Multivision, with the balance held by Australian company Charmway International, which manages the company.
The authority says it has not received royalty dues from its foreign partners for use of the license, as agreed in a joint venture agreement signed in 1997. The royalties were to be used to develop the south of the island.
"Charmway International has been given one month’s notice to pay 12 million dollars in due investment, allocate funds for the proposed ‘Ruhuna 2001 studios’ company and pay 65 million rupees in estimated royalties to SDA or undergo cancellation of the agreement," Ruwan Kasiwaththa, Director policy planning SDA told LBO.
"After completing all the legalities, we can withdraw the broadcasting license." Kasiwaththa says Charmway has also not provided the SDA with detailed accounts for many years.
"They provided accounts for 2003. The accounts for that year forecasts 65 million rupees in royalties up to 2005."
The SDA says Multivision has paid only seven million rupees in royalties to date and claim that they have little say in how the company is run due to only one slot on the board of directors.
"Accordingly, the SDA has demanded payment and Multivision has continuously failed to make any payments," the authority said in a public notice on Friday.
The public notice also restrained the sale, mortgage, transfer or alienation of assets of the pay television company, until all overdue amounts are settled.
"Under these circumstances, the SDA has demanded the assets of Multivision should not be sold, transferred, mortgaged or alienated by its directors or the management until the aforesaid royalty fees is recovered by the SDA."
Officials from Multivision were not available for comment.
Comet Cable has an 18,000 strong customer base and is one of the oldest pay television companies in Sri Lanka with 18 paid channels ranging from movies, sports, fashion to music.
The service is currently available only in the capital Colombo and suburbs.
9 comments:
Comet Cable interferes with 2.4 GHz wireless LAN
http://asoa.maldivesinfo.com
Looks like the END of Comet Cable ....and problems for its 18,000 customer base!!
comet is already in a financial crunch, under the circumtances that amount of money is likely to run the comapny bankcrupt.
RIP
CometCable
1997 - 2006
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What will happen to all the BBQ grills? Good lesson for some of the big mouthed Comet subscribers who wanted CBNsat subscribers to make Koththu with the Dish Antenna.
Quikly buy a CBNsat connection and their is no other option.
ha ha ha OMG i made fun few my friends who has CBN.. what a payback this is :D
Surely best option is cbnsat. No real problems for Comet users then. Expecially because Comet cable users are mostly wealthy people who can afford 16000/=
Those who made fun of CBNsat can go to Dish tv.
Feel sorry for you guys, having connections for so long and now losing them. How comet will pay for the royalties I don't know.
yeah especially feel sorry for the guy who added salt to wounds of CBN customers and who was rocking from top of jaic towers.
maybe at least you realised now that, you should not feast on plight of others.
try to be a better person at least in the coming new year
i went comet to pay my bills . had chat with one of the staff in there.when i ask him about SDA public notice he said comet already paid 50M for SDA and comet wont be shutdown. he also mention comet will go digital 2007. he didnt look like lien then again this is what comet tell for past 2 yrs. comet has new web page interface. maybe this indicate something is happening in there .
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