DStv competition investigation delayed: ICASA

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) announced that it has extended its deadline for responses to its questionnaire on the subscription TV market.

This is after it received requests from stakeholders to give them more time, ICASA said.

Originally, pay TV players had to submit their responses by 12 August. This deadline has been extended to 2 September.

ICASA initially planned to publish a discussion document before the end of September 2016, and expected to finish the entire investigation into South Africa’s pay TV market by the end of the financial year.

Among the questions ICASA asked were:

• What has the impact of OTT services been on your business?

“OTT” stands for “over-the-top”, and refers to services like Netflix, ShowMax, iTunes Movies, and Google Play Movies.

• What are your views on a la carte vs bouquet model in payTV?

ICASA is asking what stakeholders think of being able to choose their own channels, rather than buying fixed packages of channels.

• How have the prices you pay for rights to key content assets changed through time?

MultiChoice said these costs have increased significantly over the years.

The weakness of the rand increased costs even further as much of its content is bought in US dollars.

Other questions included:

• What are your processes for acquiring international content?
• Do you consider the payTV market to be competitive? If not, what are some of the impediments to competition in this market?
• What barriers to entry do you envisage new entrants would encounter when entering your market?
• Please provide your content spend for the past 5 years and content budget for the next 5 years per genre.
• Provide a breakdown of your content in terms of own production, commissioned content, 3rd-party exclusive contracts.

The full questionnaire is available on the ICASA website.

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