Changes to SA’s digital migration policy would in effect permanently subject us to a monopoly pay TV provider, writes David Niddrie.
Johannesburg - It is impossible to exaggerate the negative consequences of the broadcast digital migration policy gazetted by Communications Minister Faith Muthambi on Wednesday. The damage to the national broadcasting system will be huge and possibly too expensive to remedy – the price tag to the government for direct remedial costs would, conservatively, be in the tens of billions of rand. That doesn’t include the R3 billion it has allocated for the subsidy programme to roll out set-top boxes (STBs) to the millions of households that could otherwise not afford them. STBs are not a temporary necessity: they’ll be with us for decades, possibly in perpetuity.
The manifestly inadequate and misnamed “security feature” suggested by Government Gazette No 38583 will be as useful in protecting the system’s integrity as beetroot was in combating HIV/Aids. This factor alone will contribute massively to the irresistible temptation that South African digital migration offers for organised crime, petty corruption and the permanently damaging flooding of the electronics market with illegally imported, substandard STBs.
Perhaps most tragically, it will formally usher in an era of television apartheid, in which the minority with the material means and access will acquire increasingly more. The majority will get a steadily declining qualify of TV viewing, assuming – by no means a certainty – they continue to have access to TV.
South Africa’s subscription television is among the world’s most expensive. The policy would in effect permanently subject us to a monopoly provider, who would have such an extended running start – 10 years – that meaningful competition would not be a possibility without rigorous regulatory intervention.
But Muthambi shows no inclination to adopt any of the regulatory mechanisms employed in more advanced markets to encourage competition.
The monopoly’s dominance of South African TV revenues is unparalleled globally, affecting subscription TV and free-to-air.
The changes to the policy are substantial and may anger Muthambi’s fellow ministers sufficiently to necessitate a cabinet review. Substantial changes to a draft policy need cabinet endorsement, minor changes do not.
If so, this country may be spared the consequences of an initiative that subverts ANC policy and government policies on media diversity, economic development and competition.
Unfortunately, many senior figures in the government’s four-department economic cluster appear to believe – or say they believe – the changes are too modest to warrant action.
History will judge which of Muthambi’s Wednesday policy amendments is most damaging, but it may be useful to begin with her removing the requirement for a secure bootloader. A bootloader limits access to the distribution system to participating broadcasters and the network operator.
Without a secure bootloader, the system can be hacked and is vulnerable to manipulation, viruses and other interventions.
Equally important, it will enable even moderately competent hackers to access the “mux verification” code – the “security feature” in Muthambi’s policy. Mux verification means signals from the DTT transmitter (the “mux”) can be received only by accredited STBs. Removing the secure bootloader opens details of the mux verification codes to any hacker. They can, and will, then include it in sub-standard STBs and, inevitably, flood the market. The incentive for South African manufacturers – for possible STB sales to between seven and eight million non-subsidised households – vanishes, as does the policy commitment to protect them from illegal imports.
As many other countries know to their cost (ask Mauritius and the UK), fixing the consequences of an STB free-for-all is significantly more expensive than doing it right in the first place. Stand by for a flood of imported, sub-standard STBs and an explosion of fury once these stop working. A related factor is that however much the Department of Communications may spin it, mux validation is not an on-off switch. Once the box is manufactured, it will work, and work, and work. Muthambi has considerately prevented manufacturers or broadcasters from switching STBs off if they’re stolen. With five million to be manufactured and distributed in just two years, criminals have a real incentive to steal them in quantity and resell them. And this says nothing of the equally major temptation for state officials to engage in petty corruption. Also gone is the requirement that STB functions include mass messaging to viewers in all 11 official languages. The streamlined Muthambi STBs cannot provide this.
Muthambi’s motives for changing the policy so drastically can only be guessed at. But the removal of the control function benefits only one party: the monopoly pay TV operator, which has fought the inclusion of control in STBs system since its executives realised it would mean STBs could be used by new entrants to the market.
Pre-Muthambi policy iterations made it clear that broadcasters using the control function would have to pay for its use. That option has gone, although control in STBs would lower financial barriers to entry and the necessity for new entrants to have a huge war chest to take on a deeply entrenched incumbent.
Finally, the new policy cynically refers to the use of STBs as a “transitional” arrangement, necessary only until all South Africans have swopped their traditional TVs for integrated digital (ID) TVs. Even if every TV household opted for the cheapest ID TV, the cost to South Africa of a collective digital swop-out would be upwards of R60bn.
Only in the past three years has Europe, vastly more affluent than we are, begun selling more ID than traditional TV sets. Traditional sales continue to constitute a significant portion of TVs sold. And that is only new sets.
Sales of STBs in Europe are booming. That’s Europe. We’re subsidising STBs because at least five million households can’t afford the R700 or so for an STB. A R5 000 ID TV is up to five months’ income for these households. The “transition” will probably be a long one, particularly as none of the global TV manufacturers intends to produce ID TVs for the African market.
* Niddrie is a media analyst and strategist, and served as special adviser to a previous minister of communications.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent