The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on Wednesday said an agreement between pay-television (TV) broadcaster MultiChoice and public broadcaster the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) would be investigated for alleged “restrictive horizontal practice”.

Icasa on Friday took its complaint to the Competition Commission to investigate the agreement, signed in July 2013, after the SABC and MultiChoice failed to provide a copy of the agreement to the regulator despite requests.

The deal, which allowed the SABC to launch a 24-hour news channel on MultiChoice’s DStv platform, emerged amid ongoing dispute between free-to-air broadcaster e.tv and MultiChoice over whether free-to-air TV services should use a control system on the set-top boxes (STBs) required for digital terrestrial television (DTT).

Cabinet, in December, opted for the nonmandatory use of a control system in the STBs not subsidised by government.

Broadcasters not wanting to make use of the control system would be unaffected by the existence of the control system in the STBs or by the use of the system by other broadcasters, but different forms of engagement continued with different parties opposing the decision.

Icasa said the agreement, which was speculated to have been the motivator behind the SABC reversing its pro-control system stance last year, contained an obligation wherein the SABC allegedly agreed to transmit its free-to-air channels without encryption, which MultiChoice said was “an incident of the distribution arrangement agreed” between the parties.

A previous statement by Democratic Alliance shadow Minister of Communications Marian Shinn indicated that the agreement held a clause stating that, should SABC’s free-to-air channels be made available on the DTT platforms on an encrypted basis, MultiChoice could cancel the R553-million owing to SABC for airing its 24-hour news and entertainment channels on its platform.

“The question arises as to whether the agreement between the SABC and MultiChoice … may constitute a form of restrictive horizontal practice in the television market,” Icasa spokesperson Paseka Maleka said in a statement on Wednesday.