ANC pushes for encryption in digital TV debate: report

·4 Feb 2015

The impasse that has prevented South Africa’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting has been solved, Business Day reported on 4 February 2015.

According to the report, the ANC confirmed at its lekgotla last week that an earlier Cabinet decision on set-top box control must be implemented.

The Cabinet decision referred to was a solution recommended by former Minister of Communications Yunus Carrim in December 2013, which lets broadcasters decide for themselves whether they want to encrypt their signals.

However, Cabinet also decided that the government would use a control mechanism on the set-top boxes (STBs) it subsidises for the poorest households in South Africa.

Set-top boxes are decoder-like devices that South Africans will need to receive the new digital television signal.

Cabinet’s decision to include a control feature in its STBs means that the government’s choice of encryption would essentially become a de facto standard that all digital TV STBs in South Africa would have to support.

The reason the government may wish to implement STB control on subsidised boxes is to prevent the taxpayer-supported decoders from being bought up cheaply and resold elsewhere in the world.

STB control also allows a level of standard enforcement, preventing cheap, and potentially below-spec boxes, from flooding the market.

Disputed

However, not everyone was happy with Carrim’s recommendation and Cabinet’s decision. MultiChoice and one of its business partners, Namec, were vocal opponents.

MultiChoice argued that the government should not use taxpayer money to subsidise the entry of broadcasters such as E-tv into the pay-TV market.

It also said that an STB with a control mechanism would end up costing the South African consumer more at the end of the day.

In spite of this ongoing dispute between MultiChoice, E-tv, and the government, Business Day reports that the ANC has instructed Minister of Communications Faith Muthambi to take its decision to the Cabinet lekgotla which is currently being held.