ICASA to probe state of competition in broadcast industry

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ICASA to probe state of competition in broadcast industry --

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:43

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TechCentral has reported that South Africa s communications industry regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), will launch a probe into the state of competition in the broadcast industry.

South Africa s broadcasting industry is dominated by pay-TV operator, MultiChoice, which thus far has had no effective challengers to its position. Icasa will be launching an inquiry into the state of competition in the information and communications technology (ICT) industries as a whole, and will make this situation in the broadcasting sector a key focus of this probe.

Icasa councillor William Currie outlined the background of the probe at a press conference held on Thursday 13 March. Icasa intends using the inquiry to focus on everything from the allocation of radio frequency spectrum to competition in the postal services sector.

In a notice that will be published this week in the Government Gazette, Icasa has outlined some of the areas it intends probing as part of its inquiry. They include network neutrality, a contentious issue that has become the subject of heated debate in the US in recent months.

Currie said that South Africa s broadcasting industry included a range of competitive or anticompetitive dynamics .

Foremost in our mind is the fate of TopTV, he added. Questions have been posed to us about why this happened. The finger is being pointed at Icasa: You licensed a whole bunch of subscription TV services and only one has launched and is in business rescue, he says, adding that Icasa wants to understand what happened.

For example, there was this initiative by Telkom to try to develop the Telkom Media subscription [service]. That did not succeed, but we ve never really understood why.

In the commercial radio sector, Icasa is aware that many broadcasters have been looking at forms of consolidation in which they take minority shares across a range of stations, presumably to build economies of scale, but we have never interrogated that directly , Currie added.

Other areas of the broadcasting sector will be probed, including whether subscription television companies should be allowed to accept advertising in competition with free-to-air rivals.

Icasa also wants to understand the implications of convergence and so-called over-the-top services such as streaming video providers Netflix and Hulu in broadcasting and voice-over-Internet protocol providers in telecommunications.

Currie says the inquiry is meant to find ways of promoting competition in the ICT sector. He says it is not an Electronic Communications Act chapter 10 inquiry into competition in specific market segments, but rather an over-arching inquiry that could lead later to chapter 10 investigations.

The main questions that Icasa will be asking of the ICT sector and broadcasting in particular, Currie put it was: Is this part of the kind of culture that we are having to deal with, with regard to significant market power, dominant monopolies, duopolies in our market? Are we going to be condemned to a continuous process of this kind of in my mind counterproductive experience in trying to have a competitive market?

Additional source: SABC News

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