Bad news for people who subscribed to DStv rival

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) says it isn’t aware of any further legal action from pay-TV operator and DStv rival StarSat, which was taken off air in early October 2024.

Following its non-compliance with the communications regulator, StarSat’s headquarters was raided by Icasa and law enforcement officials, who disconnected and confiscated the broadcaster’s equipment.

StarSat promised to take the issue back to court for a review. MyBroadband asked the regulator whether it has seen further legal action against it from StarSat, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.

However, Icasa spokesperson Zanele Ntuli told TV with Thinus that the watchdog isn’t aware of any further legal action from StarSat, StarTimes, or On Digital Media.

The regulator and officers from the South African Police Service raided the broadcaster’s headquarters in Midrand on Wednesday, 2 October 2024.

Authorities disconnected and confiscated StarSat broadcasting equipment.

However, the broadcaster felt the raid wasn’t carried out correctly, with authorities also disconnecting its equipment to broadcast to countries in the rest of Africa.

“They started unplugging things. They started just ripping out all the equipment we need to broadcast, not just to South Africa, but to the rest of Africa as well,” said StarSat marketing manager Jan Hendrik Harmse.

“As we speak, our customers have nothing showing on their screen, and many other countries in Africa are also black on screen.”

He claimed that authorities failed to bring the correct technicians to know what they should and shouldn’t remove.

“We have no idea what the damage is. We only hope that we can resolve this with the courts because we have approached them,” said Harmse.

“We were there this morning before Icasa arrived, but they went ahead with the search and seizure anyways, so we’re challenging that urgently.”

He added that StarSat had applied to the court for an urgent interdict.

However, he said the broadcaster would face an uphill battle even if the interdict were granted. It would still need to assess the damage and reconnect its equipment.

StarSat has been operating illegally in South Africa since 18 September 2024. The communications regulator had given it until then to shut down its local operations itself.

This came after the pay-TV broadcaster submitted its broadcast licence applications long after the deadline.

Its licence expired on 8 July 2023, and it only submitted its application in November of that same year.

According to the Electronic Communications Act, broadcasters must submit their renewal application “no earlier than 12 months and no later than six months prior” to the expiry date.

“The authority does not have the legislative or regulatory mandate to consider a renewal application for a licence that has already expired,” it added.

While Harmse acknowledged that StarSat was late in submitting its application, he said it faced significant challenges as the renewal deadline approached.

He said the broadcaster also regularly engaged with Icasa.

“We did have a deadline to meet, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we couldn’t get the right investors in, there were shareholder agreements that still needed to be fine, and we kept communicating the issue to them,” said Harmse.

He said StarSat made Icasa well aware that its application would be late if the regulator required all the paperwork to be submitted simultaneously.

“We kept saying it would be late if you wanted all the paperwork at the same time. So, we did submit late, but we submitted everything we needed to,” he added.

Harmse claimed that StarSat checked off all the boxes stipulated in the regulations and should be able to run. However, he said Icasa doesn’t want to hear it out.