Free-to-air broadcaster e.tv’s court victory against the Department of Communications (DoC) over the conditional access control over subsidised set-top boxes (STBs) could have significant repercussions for the industry, contract manufacturing, communications and defence group Tellumat said on Thursday.

The decision by the South Gauteng High Court allowing the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa to grant conditional access control to broadcasters instead of DoC-appointed Sentech could lead to significant delays, costs and service issues to changing STB management, Tellumat managing executive for STB Shaun Hendricks said.

Many manufacturers, including Tellumat, had invested millions of rands and years into the development of the digital broadcasting specification, systems that were compliant with the specification and related solutions and market strategies, he said.

“The specification was finalised a year ago, settling a number of undefined specification areas including the control system – also known as conditional access (CA),” Hendricks said.

Moving the specification “even just slightly” or integrating new CA vendors could take six months to a year.

“If e. tv’s win is upheld on appeal, and the station is given equal rights to managing the system, and they insist on changing the existing specification baseline, this will cause more delays, and the millions in investment would be lost.”

The DoC, which was appealing the court’s decision, said the matter needed to be dealt with urgently or the country would miss its migration deadline.

South Africa had until 2015 to complete its migration from analogue to digital broadcasting before analogue broadcasting frequencies’ exclusivity, or protection, was lifted, resulting in signal interruptions.

“To complicate the situation unduly is not in consumers’, the industry’s or the country’s interests. It only serves the narrow interests of a few. One would hope the department would see its way open to pursue a solution that is both legally sound and pragmatic,” Hendricks concluded.