OPPOSITION parties remain dissatisfied by fudged answers about the country’s long-awaited move from analogue to digital TV signals.
The Communications Department briefed MPs on Tuesday on digital migration and controls or encryption in the required set-top boxes.
Communications officials said there would be controls in the set-top boxes to “protect the state’s investment” and so that these devices do not work outside South Africa, but that it was up to broadcasters themselves to invest in any encryption. Opposition questions on encryption and access control were dismissed as playing with semantics and “convoluted terms”.
The set-top boxes are needed to continue viewing television after the move from analogue to digital broadcasting. The international deadline is June 17, 2015.
“Control system doesn’t mean conditional access,” said Norman Munzehele, who is in charge of the department’s policy and entity oversight.
“Our response to any person who wants to encrypt content… they are going to invest in that encryption. Our responsibility stops at: this box must be protected.”
The department’s digital migration project manager Solly Mokoetle, a former SABC chief executive, said: “We want to protect the device so there’ll be a control system to protect the box from, for example, leaving the country… Government’s role is not in controlling access, but it can protect its investment.”
South Africa’s digital migration has been deadlocked for at least three years over the set-top boxes and strong, deep-seated commercial interests: pay television service monopoly MultiChoice opposes any encryption or access control measures, as does the public broadcaster SABC, but e.tv and others want them.
The manufacture, or at least local assembly, of set-top boxes will also solicit incentives via trade and industry as the government is set to spend around R3 billion on free set-top boxes to five million poor households.
The January ANC lekgotla said the government must act “with speed” on digital migration. It and the February cabinet lekgotla decided in favour of the December 2013 digital migration policy. This policy allowed for an option for access control functions, which must be paid for by those wanting it, or not having one at all. Last week the cabinet announced it had adopted an amended broadcasting digital migration policy with a control system “which will be clearly defined when the policy is published”.
On Tuesday the DA and EFF said the Communication Department’s answers had failed to clarify the situation around access control and encryption.
EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said the government needed to answer on encryption, “which may allow for new entrants in the market to destabilise the monopoly of MultiChoice”.
“They (government) are controlling the box, that’s good. But what is of most urgent interest is encryption. If there are new upcoming entrants to the market, it’s not clear that they are going to benefit because it looks like the space will still be dominated in terms of pay television by MultiChoice.”
DA MP Marian Shinn said the issue of controlled access was “not clear”. Systems to stop set-top boxes from being used outside South Africa already existed through the conditional access system of Sentech, the state-owned broadcasting and broadband infrastructure entity.
“The same Sentech computer system also enables encryption of content and messaging from broadcasters to viewers,” Shinn said. “I am suspicious of the Department of Communication’s motives in not using the tried and tested system.”
Questions also remained on whether the tender process for the set-top boxes would be for local manufacture or simply to supply them, the criteria of what constitutes a poor household, the training of installers and the capacity of the Post Office to distribute the set-top boxes.
However, the Post Office on Tuesday told MPs it would “by-pass” the usual mail delivery channels to ensure distribution for which R929 million had been set aside over three years.
There is one agreement in place: all devices will carry the logo of a swoosh with the words “go digital”.
Cape Argus