Cabinet Must Reverse Digital TV policy

17 June 2015

The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on the Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe to get Cabinet to rapidly review and reverse the Broadcast Digital Migration (BDM) policy it passed in March. This is critical to break the legal logjam that is crippling South Africa’s migration to digital broadcasting.

At midnight today (Wednesday, June 17) the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ceases to protect analogue broadcasting signals from interference from broadcasters that have migrated to digital broadcasting.

South Africa is listed on the ITU website among the bottom 14 African countries that have either not started their digital migration process or whose status in the process is unknown. Namibia is one of these.

Neighbouring Mozambique has transitioned. Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho are progressing with a phased approach.

South Africa’s retarded Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) process has been riddled with political interference and incompetence for a decade. The latest legal challenge to BDM focuses on the lack of encryption capability for the Set Top Boxes (STBs) to be locally produced to South African Bureau of Standards specifications.

It is widely believed in the electronics manufacturing and broadcasting sector that the policy, whose most recent controversial amendment was done without public participation, was written to favour pre-selected STB suppliers and the effective duopoly of SABC and MultiChoice.

The current legal challenge by eTV, which believes lack of encryption capabilities jeopardises its financial sustainability, is delaying the assembly and sale of SABS-standard STBs to South Africans with analogue TV sets.

South Africa cannot be held up by a policy that contradicts itself, is clearly anti-competitive as well as being contrary to the policy of the governing party and its alliance partners.

The DA calls on Cabinet to recognise its error in approving this policy and to reverse it so that our country can fast-track the DTT process and take advantage of the economic and service delivery potential that the freed-up analogue broadcast spectrum offers for wireless broadband connectivity, and the expansion of broadcasting ownership, content and viewer choice.

Statement issued by Marian Shinn MP, DA Shadow Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, June 17 2015