In what looks like a resistance to compliance with regulations, MultiChioce South Africa may run into trouble over rebbuffing of compliance notices issued by the country's regulator,National Consumer Commission (NCC), which directed pay-TV operators to restructure the packages they offer consumers. MultiChoice, operator of Digital Satellite Television (DSTV) in South Africa and Nigeria, and another pay-TV operator, TopTV were on October 13, issued with the notices which gave them 14 days to object.Quoting section 13 of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), the commission said that pay-TV stations would have to review their respective customer offerings, and make amends where deemed necessary.Head of the commission, Mamodupi Mohlala said that 'Consumers have the right to choose and, if goods are bundled, consumers must derive economic benefit from buying the bundle.' According to the Act and depending on the outcome of deliberations, the operators may have to consider finer categorisation of channels, according to specific genres, and offer individually priced channels to customers, rather than offering only channel bouquets, as is the current status quo.Under the bouquet system, customers are offered programmes in bundle of family,compact and premium while in the NCC directive operators are mandated to allowed customer to pay for specific programmes of thier choices,which the operators are rejecting.Mohlala disclosed that the move was prompted by a proactive investigation into the ICT industry, in which the NCC identified non-compliance with the provisions of section 13 of the CPA stressing that the Act outlined the consumer's right to select suppliers, and includes legislation on the bundling of goods and services.Protesting the decision of the regulator, Chief Executive Officer, TopTV's umbrella organisation, On Digital Media (ODM), Vino Govender, said that his company also intends to reject the NCC's proposal. According to him, 'the proposal would force us to offer consumers the ability to pick and choose the channels they want to subscribe to' saying that we have 'taken legal steps to repudiate the commission's line of action, because it threatens our business model and could force the only pay-TV alternative to MultiChoice out of business'. MultiChoice has also countered the NCC's proposal, but will not divulge the details of the ongoing issue just yet. Corporate affairs GM at MultiChoice South Africa, Jackie Rakitla said that 'MultiChoice South Africa believes it is not in contravention of the CPA and has communicated this position to the NCC. We are not in a position to respond to any questions in this regard until this matter has been resolved between us and the commission.'However, Govender not that if TopTV remodels its product structure, it would cause serious harm to the business and even 'lead to closure which would effect as many as 6000 jobs nationally'.He said that TopTV did in fact consider this route before its launch, but found it to be financially impracticable stressing that 'we considered offering a pick-and-mix a la carte option, but discovered the model made no financial sense as content providers would have hiked the cost of channels substantially.'He added that the model is impossible to maintain from a systems and administrative point of view.However, in Nigeria, the case that the pay-TV are arguing for is what obtains in a country, where there seems not to be any formidable rival to MultiChioce Nigeria.Investigations revealed that in Nigeria subscribes are made to pay even programmes that they may not even need. Programmes are bundled together in bouquets living the consumer with the choice of picking from the list of bouquets. It was also gathered that MultiChoice Nigeria also reserves the right to alter a particular bouquet without regard to the right of the consumers.Investigations revealed that in Nigeria subscribes are made to pay even for programmes that they may not even need. Programmes are bundled together in bouquets living the consumer with the choice of picking from the list of bouquets. MultiChoice Nigeria also reserves the right to alter a particular bouquet by informing the consumer about its decision to do so.
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