e.tv went to court at the end of 2012 and won a victorious court ruling from the South Gauteng High Court which ruled that South African broadcasters - and not the government and not other parties such as the parastatal signal distributer Sentech - has the right to control the encryption system or so-called conditional access (CA) system the government forced to be build into the set-top boxes (STB's) for digital terrestrial television (DTT).
South Africa's TV industry has to switch to DTT from analogue broadcasts, a process known as digital migration, but as year after year role by with new ministers of communication, new empty promises, and very actual progress, South Africa which was first on the African continent to start looking at the process of digital migration, keeps getting passed by one African country after another.
Although the South Gauteng High Court found in e.tv's favour, finding that the misguided minister of communications had acted unlawfully in appointing Sentech and that free-to-air broadcasters such as e.tv and the SABC have the right to decide on the STB control system for DTT, the department of communications last week decided to lodge an appeal against the ruling.
This appeal will now further delay South Africa's digital terrestrial migration.
To add insult to injury the department of communications on Monday had the audacity to say that it wants e.tv and the SABC to please come with suggestions on how to speed up the process of digital migration and how the tender process for STB's could be sped up despite the court case which will now continue.
The department of communications also said it had a meeting with the SABC and e.tv on Monday about these DTT issues.
Now e.tv is slamming Dina Pule's department of communications, saying in a strongly-worded statement that "if the minister were to abide by the decision of the High Court, the free-to-air broadcasters would be in a position to put the DTT process back in track with immediate effect."
"Unfortunately, the minister has proceeded to issue media statement which misrepresent the nature of the ruling and which imply that free-to-air broadcasters are responsible for the delays on DTT," says e.tv.
"Much has been made of meetings arranged by the ministry with broadcasters to 'resolve' the issue," says e.tv. "This is untrue as the ministry has used these meetings to merely restate its original position."
"In addition, several solutions proposed by e.tv both during and after the litigation, including at this week's meetings, which would allay many of the ministry's concerns have not been taken into account by the ministry. Instead, the ministry's statements imply that free-to-air broadcasters would be responsible for the delay in issuing the set-top box tender."
"e.tv hopes that the solutions which will be presented to the ministry by the SABC and e.tv will be taken seriously so that the process can get back on track without further litigration and inevitable delays," says e.tv.
ALSO READ: Little progress in South Africa's digital television migration switch-over which sadly, blatantly, got hijacked for so-called job creation.
