MultiChoice is unable to say what led to the loss of all of the SABC's TV channels which all went dark on DStv on Friday evening.
For some reason not yet explained, a blackout occured on Friday evening of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and SABC News on DStv when the uplink between the SABC and MultiChoice was lost.
MultiChoice apologised later on Friday night, apologising for the interruption to its millions of subscribers in South Africa.
MultiChoice has to carry SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 under the so-called "must carry" broadcasting regulations of the South African broadcasting regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), and MultiChoice signed a contract with the SABC in June 2013 to provide the SABC News (DStv 404) 24-hour TV news channel.
MultiChoice says the satellite pay-TV provider doesn't have a further update as to what it said on Friday.
MultiChoice is unable to say why the uplink of the SABC channels was lost and what went wrong. MultiChoice isn't yet able to say if there was a back-up system, and if that worked, of if there is just one main uplinking system.
Interestingly, SABC1 and SABC2 returned to DStv first, followed a few minuted later by SABC3 and SABC News, ending the Friday evening blackout.
MultiChoice was asked why all the channels didn't return at the same time, but the satellite pay-TV operator isn't explaining.
MultiChoice was asked on Monday as well if anything was done or implemented or changed to prevent a possible recurrence, and how easily something like what happened, can happen to DStv subscribers again. MultiChoice declined to answer.
