South Africa's pay TV operators have rejected the compliance notice issued to them by the National Consumer Commission which has ordered South Africa's pay TV operators to perform a so-called ''unbundling'' of their TV channels and allow pay TV subscribers to choose TV channels from pay TV providers individually on a ''pick and pay'' basis.
In essense the National Consumer Commission sees individual TV channels as separate ''products'' and the delivery of multiple TV channels as ''bundling''.
Similar to a box of multi-coloured crayons that's sold as one product, the global pay TV model, as followed by operators in South Africa, works through making a collection of linear TV streams available through an economy of scale. The Commission is ordering pay TV operators to take the crayons out of the box and sell them one by one, individually.
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Last month the National Consumer Commission ordered MultiChoice that runs DStv and On Digital Media that runs TopTV to amend their contracts and to also ''unbundle'' the way they sell TV channels to subscribers and set a deadline of November for them to respond to the Commission.
Vino Govender, CEO of ODM told TV with Thinus today that On Digital Media intends to reject the proposal by the National Consumer Commission ''that would force us to offer consumers the ability to pick and choose the channels they want to subscribe to''.
Vino Govender says ODM has ''taken legal steps to repudiate the commission's line of action because it threatens our business model''. He says if TopTV complies and allow subscribers to subscribe to only a few select TV channels it ''could force the only pay-TV alternative to MultiChoice out of business; this will not be in the best interests of the end consumers.''
''We have considered offering pick and mix a la carte options before TopTV launched but discovered the model made no financial sense as content providers would have hiked the cost of channels substantially. The model is also from a systems and administrative point of view impossible to maintain,'' says Vino Govender.
''If we remodel our product structure it will cause our business serious harm and could lead to our closure,'' he says. Vino Govender says such a move would cost South Africa as much as 6 000 jobs nationally.
MultiChoice feels the same as has also objected to the order from the Commission.
''MultiChoice South Africa has objected to the compliance notice served on us by the National Consumer Commission,'' says Jackie Rakitla, the general manager for corporate affairs at MultiChoice South Africa. ''We are not in a position to respond to any questions in this regard until the matter has been resolved at the Consumer Tribunal.''
