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Pay TV operator TopTV told parliament that the advent of digital terrestrial television (DTT) in South Africa, where the country will be switching from analogue to digital broadcasting, is ''a challenge for us'' and that ''at the end of the day it represents new competition against platforms such as us''.
''One such manner that such competition manifests is that it creates more avenues for advertising. The SABC spoke of creating 18 new TV channels and that's an opportunity for them to take an ever greater portion of the advertising market, which we're only just starting to go towards,'' Thato Mahapa, TopTV's senior manager for regulatory affairs, told the government.
''Digital terrestrial television in South Africa will also be a threat to us in the sense that it will be cheaper; there will be no monthly cost and more channels. DTT creates multichannel viewing with the only significant an annual TV licence fee. Essentially DTT will also be covering the same target market that we look at. For us as a new entrant into the South African broadcasting market we see DTT presenting a significant threat to our market share expansion. But we still consider it as a necessary development,'' Thato Mahapa said.
