The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has once again extended deadline for consumers to select TV channels they want to pay for, till March 31st, 2019.Earlier, the deadline to migrate consumers on the new tariff regime was February 1st.There are about 100 million cable service TV homes and 67 million direct-to-home (DTH) households in the country and as per Trai, approximately 65% of the subscribers of the cable services and 35% subscribers of the DTH services have already exercised the options.Trai said that in view of the larger public interest, it has directed all distribution platform operators (cable & DTH services providers) that those subscribers who do not exercise their options shall be migrated to a ‘Best Fit Plan’.Also, subscribers’ old plan will continue till either subscriber exercise his/her option, or he/she is migrated to the Best Fit Plan (BFP), which is based on consumers’ usage pattern, language spoken and popularity of channels.“The Authority hereby extends time up to March 31, 2019 for exercising the option by such subscribers who have not exercised option yet,” Trai said.Trai has also directed that subscribers will be free to change their best fit plan at any date and time on or before 31 March, 2019 and distribution platforms will have to migrate into the desired pack (channel/bouquet) within 72 hours.Moreover, there will be no ‘lock-in period’ for the subscribers till March 31st, who has been migrated to best fit plan by DPOs.“It was brought to the notice of the Authority that as the system of selecting channels/bouquet by the subscribers had been introduced for first time in the country, some subscribers were facing difficulties in selecting the channels/bouquet of their choice. In some cases, local cable operators (LCOs) have not been able to reach out to subscriber to create awareness among them and collect the options,” Trai said in its statement on Tuesday.TRAI had notified the new regulatory framework for broadcasting and cable services in March last year, which came into effect on December 29th, 2018. However, to provide sufficient time to subscribers for exercising their options, the regulator had provided time up to January 31st, 2019.ET reported on Tuesday that cable and DTH players have been switching off select channels to consumers across India in order to speed up the process to get consumers’ choice. Trai said that such incidences are causing hardship to the subscribers.“The authority has been emphasising time and again that no inconvenience should be caused to subscribers while they are migrated to new framework,” Trai said.The decision to extend the deadline was taken after a meeting of all DTH operators and major multi system operators (MSOs) in the TRAI office on Monday.Trai said that the operators have informed that implementation of migration was in full swing and that subscribers who have exercised their option have been migrated to new framework.