The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) has asked the Competition Commission to investigate a "possible restrictive horizontal practice" between the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and MultiChoice.
ICASA's request comes several months after the two broadcasters agreed the SABC would provide a 24-hour news channel on MultiChoice' DSTV platform.
In a statement, ICASA says: "News reports at the time indicated that the agreement also contained an obligation relating to set-top box control in which the SABC is alleged to have agreed that it will transmit its free-to-air channels without encryption."
MultiChoice and the SABC have been at loggerheads with the other free-to-air broadcaster, etv, over whether a control system should be included in the set-top boxes needed for when SA officially launches digital television.
The satellite broadcaster, which is against the control system, and etv have been involved in a lengthy public dispute over the relative advantages, or not, of controls. Communications minister Yunus Carrim has decreed that subsidised boxes will have controls, but broadcasters can choose whether to implement them.
However, due to the wrangling, the matter has yet to be finalised, which has delayed the go-live date for digital television, as no decoders can be produced until the matter is resolved.
Deal dispute
Now, ICASA has stepped into the fray and said, in the context of the ongoing public dispute between etv and MultiChoice over whether free-to-air TV services should use set-top box control, "the question arises as to whether the agreement between the SABC and MultiChoice, as it affects the issue of set-top-box control, may constitute a form of restrictive horizontal practice in the television market".
The R500 million deal, according to the City Press, was signed off by former communications minister Dina Pule and stops the public broadcaster from transmitting its channels over an encrypted network.
ICASA has asked both the SABC and MultiChoice to provide a copy of the agreement, but both parties have failed to honour that request. It says this has made it difficult for it to verify MultiChoice's claim that the SABC's need to transmit without encryption is part of an agreement between parties in a vertical relationship and not a horizontal restrictive practice.
The regulator adds horizontal restrictive practices fall under the ambit of the Competition Act.
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