The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) has lauded a revised standard on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and Direct-To-Home (DTH) receivers that makes Conditional Access System (CAS) non-mandatory for Free-To-Air (FTA) receivers.
The new standard published by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) means that television broadcasters authorised by the National Communications Authority (NCA) to operate in the Free-To-Air (FTA) category could continue to reach the public without viewership restriction.
A statement issued by the association in Accra, yesterday, described the exclusion of the mandatory CAS, which comes after weeks of advocacy and deliberations, as “a major victory for indigenous Ghanaian businesses which dominates the FTA sector”.
The restriction was required by the terms of their authorisation consistent with the provisions of the 1992 Constitution, regarding media freedoms, human rights and the individual rights to information.
In May this year, GIBA said it raised concerns about the Ministry of Communication (MoC) ’s move to introduce a mandatory encryption of Free-To-Air television by means of a conditional access module for the purpose of collecting TV licence fees contrary to the original draft policy.
According to the statement, the GIBA concerns stemmed from the revision of the draft policy to the effect that the existing Ghana Standard on digital television receivers for Free-To-Air would be revised to include conditional access among other new features.
For example, it said the paragraph 5.4 of the policy indicated that even digital television sets already in Ghanaian homes and receiving digital channels could not continue to receive signals from the DTT platform unless a Conditional Access (CA) embedded Set-Top-Box (STB) prescribed by the Ministry of Communications was acquired in addition.
The MoC, it said, ignored the concerns of GIBA, and pushed for the mandatory CA feature from GSA which was referred to the GSA Technical Committee on Telecommunications and ICT Equipment Standards (TC 24) for consideration.
It recounted that MoC through the NCA went further to suspend the DTT conformance certification process and ban the manufacture, sale, purchase and promotion of DTT Receivers.
These actions, according to the statement, caused an uproar in the television industry amidst some legal challenges which was eventually modified by means of an addendum allowing existing DTT operations to continue until another specification was adopted.
“After several weeks of deliberation by the Technical Committee, the GSA globally published its report for public comments and indicated that some of the proposed amendments from the MoC were incorporated into the updated standard but the proposal to include a mandatory Conditional Access System (CAS) could not be incorporated because, among other reasons, the Committee did not find it appropriate to include that in a standard specification document for Free-To-Air television receivers”, it said.
Following receipt of comments from industry stakeholders, dealers and world renowned manufacturers, the statement said the GSA proceeded to publish the final standard which has now been gazetted and was available for sale at the authority.
BY TIMES REPORTER
