Inquiry into Subscription Television Broadcasting Services

Posted by LA Thornton on Tuesday, August 29, 2017
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa has published a Discussion Document in its Inquiry into Subscription Television Broadcasting Services.  This is the inquiry that must proceed regulations that -

1.  define markets,
2.  determine if there is ineffective competition in those markets,
3.  identify licensees with significant market power in those markets, and
4.  impose appropriate pro-competitive licence conditions on licensees with significant market power.

The following markets are proposed by Icasa.
  • Wholesale content:
  • premium movies
  • live soccer
  • live rugby
  • live cricket
  • other premium content
  • non-premium content

  • Wholesale channel:
  • basic tier
  • premium tier

  • Retail:
  • basic tier
  • premium tier

  • Wholesale technical services

Icasa has preliminarily assessed the markets identified and views them as possibly ineffectively competitive.

Without saying as much, it also identified Multichoice/DSTv as having significant market power.

The pro-competitive licence conditions proposed by Icasa include:
  • shorter duration of long term contracts
  • rights splitting and rights divestiture
  • wholesale must-offer
  • set-top box interoperability
Comments are due 31 October 2017.


Tags: broadcasting  "market review" 
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