Johannesburg - If the government proceeded with a plan to install conditional access control into set-top boxes, which it will supply to about 5 million South African homes, it would set back the country many years technologically, MultiChoice chief executive Imtiaz Patel argued yesterday.
Globally, manufacturers such as Samsung are moving towards providing integrated television sets that no longer require a separate set-top box to translate signals.
The government is preparing to appoint set-top box manufacturers for its digital terrestrial television migration project, which is an international requirement as the world moves to digital signal broadcasting from analogue by 2015.
The state plans to subsidise up to 70 percent of the cost of a set-top box in homes that qualify for its subsidy programme. The launch of the project has been stymied by an ongoing impasse between free-to-air broadcasters SABC and e.tv and the government over the move to include conditional access control in the set-top boxes.
While e.tv is in favour of conditional access, the SABC no longer wants the technology in the boxes. Conditional access is a mechanism to control the use of the box geographically, and for commercial purposes broadcasters are able to switch non-payers off remotely.
Patel argued that the set-up costs of including access would require maintenance teams including call centres, which were costly. DStv parent MultiChoice spends about R1 billion annually to subsidise set-top boxes to its paying subscribers. Patel said the concern was that technology was moving towards integrated television sets. “It’s complete nonsense. In some ways it’s a bit of an arms deal situation where there are people who want to make money off the back of [the] government.
“e.tv, who in particular have got pay-TV plans, do not want to incur the massive cost of this decoder subsidy; of paying for their own conditional access. They’ve got a plan to make [the] government pay for it.”
But e.tv has maintained that it will not launch a pay channel.
Spokesman Vasili Vass said yesterday: “At the time the pay-TV licences were awarded, e.sat TV (the holders of the licence and not e.tv) advised the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) that the South African market could not sustain more than two pay-TV service providers at the time.
“With the issue of five licences, the company took a decision that market conditions were not strong enough to launch another pay-TV platform,” he added.
On September 12, 2007, e.sat was announced as one of five licence recipients.
Siya Qoza, the spokesman for the Department of Communications, said it was waiting for a report from the facilitators of the mediation process. “This is quite urgent… the next step would be to take the report to [the] cabinet. Once [the] cabinet decides, it should probably be a matter of days [to implement the decision].”
He said the government had not moved from its policy supporting conditional access.
Meanwhile, MultiChoice has rubbished reports that its R553 million contract signed in July with the SABC would be detrimental to the public broadcaster, which has launched a news channel on DStv, and will launch an entertainment channel before the end of the year.
“There was no breach of the agreement and we are not sure where the R100m penalty [for not launching the entertainment channel on time] originated from,” MultiChoice said. - Business Report