The Independent Communications Authority of SA will extend its long-running investigation into competition in the pay-TV sector as a rapidly evolving digital market exposes new areas worthy of scrutiny.
Among the issues that the regulator will investigate are the scope to push up the number of operators, find ways to get companies with no clear physical boundaries to pay the appropriate amount of tax, and tighten licensing requirements for streaming companies. MultiChoice — the biggest local pay TV provider — has railed against deep pocketed international services such as Netflix, saying they enjoy unfair advantage because they don’t pay SA taxes and aren’t subject to as much regulation as local operators. For example, local operators have quotas on the amount of local content that they need to produce and screen.
Icasa chairperson Keabetswe Modimoeng says more work needs to be done, in the current financial year, to understand the market after preliminary findings from the six-year process. OTT mainly refers to online video streaming players such Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and, by the end of May, US entertainment giant Disney+. On-demand streaming is the biggest disruption to the pay-TV market since satellite television came to SA in the 1990s.
But while still holding its view on international competitors, MultiChoice does appear to be working to control its fortunes.
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