South African pay-TV giant MultiChoice has reported that a civil case against Uni Li Cell has concluded, which involved 5,000 imported power supply units for use with MultiChoice decoders. The proceedings, under the Counterfeit Goods Act, saw Uni Li Cell and its sole director — who the company hasn’t named – following the seizure of […]
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has announced that SABC Plus, its OTT streaming platform, has reached 1 million registered users since its relaunch in July 2024. The surge in registrations has been largely attributed to live sports broadcasts, which have regularly attracted over 60,000 new users per major game. Additionally, the recent #SwitchToStream campaign […]
A carriage agreement between South Africa’s public broadcaster SABC and pay-TV operator MultiChoice struck in 2013 and which saw MultiChoice carry SABC’s channels on its system has emerged from a legal problem. South Africa’s Competition Tribunal on April 14th said it had dismissed an “exception application” brought by MultiChoice over a channel-supply agreement with the […]
South African pay-TV operator MultiChoice, the parent company of pay-TV platforms DStv and GOtv, has reportedly suffered a substantial loss of subscribers over the past two years. According to Citizen SA, the company has seen its subscriber base drop by 3.7 million, falling from 23 million to an overall total of 19.3 million. This decline […]
A consortium led by Actis, an investor in sustainable infrastructure, has completed the acquisition of a 100 per cent stake in Swiftnet, a telecom tower portfolio in South Africa. The Actis-led consortium, which includes international and local investors including the Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC), a 100 per cent black-owned broad-based South African investment holding company, […]
A last-minute ruling by South Africa’s High Court postponed the nation’s planned analogue switch off of its TV signals, due on March 31st. The Court ruled in favour of broadcaster e.tv in its bid to stop communications minister Solly Malatsi from switching off analogue television broadcasts. E-tv, a free-to-air broadcaster, filed suit against the country’s […]
Officially, on March 31st, South Africa is obliged to switch-off its analogue TV transmissions. However, a High Court hearing in Pretoria suggests that – again – the switch-off could be delayed. The actual analogue switch-off date was originally set for December 31st 2006, in accordance with ITU rulings, and, while high-power transmissions were curbed in […]
Elon Musk has written on his social media platform X to complain that his Starlink satellite internet service is “not allowed to operate in South Africa because I’m not black”. The controversial posting immediately drew strong criticism from X users, including Clayson Monyela, South Africa’s head of public diplomacy, who branded it as “not true” […]
South Africa pay-TV broadcaster OnDigital Media, parent of StarSat, is no more. Fifteen years after being licensed, the company has been placed into liquidation. “OnDigital Media, the independent broadcasting licence holder that processed StarSat’s payments, has been liquidated,” Jan Hendrick Harmse, marketing manager at StarSat. This means that subscribers who pre-paid their annual viewing fees […]
South Africa has suspended talks over licensing SpaceX’s Starlink service in the country because of tensions with the Donald Trump administration in the US. A Bloomberg report says that “negotiators plan to wait until the dispute between the US and South Africa calm down, with the intention to return to a possible deal at a […]