The digital migration regulations published last week by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) confirm two things. These are that SA will miss its November 2011 deadline to switch to digital broadcasting, and that new players in the industry will have to wait much longer before being licensed.
As a member state of the UN's International Telecommunications Union, SA has to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting by 2015. The global move is due to the escalating costs of maintaining the ageing analogue infrastructure. Digital broadcasting offers more channels and improved sound and picture quality.
SA had aimed to complete the transition by November next year, but the migration has been riddled with delays.
Wider choice - Digital offers more channels
The department of communications has not contracted any company to manufacture set-top-boxes (STB), which were supposed to be available this June. This despite promising a year ago that it would issue a R3,5bn tender split among manufacturers, depending on their size and experience. Industry insiders say the delay is due to the absence of a black-owned company that specialises in STBs.
Several attempts to contact the department for information have been unsuccessful.
SA has an estimated 9,1m households with TVs. The 2,6m pay-TV subscribers can receive digital broadcasts, but the rest will need STB decoders.
The communications department is also yet to outline how it intends to subsidise poor households to receive STBs. In 2008, the estimated cost of a decoder was between R400 and R700. Former communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri promised that government would subsidise 5m poor households by up to 70% of the decoder cost.
For M-Net and new broadcasting hopefuls - among them Avusa, Kagiso Media and a consortium led by the National African Federated Chambers of Commerce - the new regulations aren't good news. SA suffers from a severe shortage of spectrum needed for new players, and migration to digital broadcasting will free additional spectrum.
Icasa has done away with any reference to Multiplex 3 - a channel used to communicate multiple signals - sticking to only Multiplex 1 and 2.
The decision, says Icasa spokesman Paseka Maleka, follows a clash between M-Net and the authority on how Multiplex 3 should be allocated. Icasa had wanted M-Net to complete its switchover to digital in 12 months, half the time given to other broadcasters. In return, M-Net wanted Icasa to give it a significant portion of the Multiplex 3 signal.
"What we said to Icasa was that in law, the regulator could not dictate to one party how to conduct its business," says Karen Willenberg, head of regulatory affairs at M-Net. "We said the switchover needed to be on terms that would justify the expense to our shareholders."
But Maleka says M-Net's estimate that the switchover would cost it about R750m is contested by other broadcasters, and "within the limited time frame, the authority was not able to conduct a detailed cost analysis to arrive at a final determination.
"Instead of prolonging the discussions at the expense of the entire DTT (digital terrestrial TV) process, the authority reverted to its original position of two multiplexes."
The new regulations state that M-Net will share a multiplex with e.tv.
Willenberg says M-Net is disappointed. "The proposal would have facilitated the entering of many players into DTT." She says now industry hopefuls will have to wait until the end of the dual broadcasting process before they are issued with licences.
