South Africa will not use CA to cut off non-payers, says minister

The South African government has no intention of using conditional access in digital-terrestrial set-top boxes to cut off viewers who don’t pay the country’s TV licence fee, according to communications minister Yunus Carrim.

Carrim told the South African parliament that the government had no intention of trying to use conditional access in DTT set-top boxes to cut off signals to those who failied to pay the licence fee used to support public broadcaster SABC.

There has been a heated debate in the country about whether to incorporate conditional access in set-top boxes to be rolled out ahead of the country’s long-delayed digital switchover, with some broadcasters opposed to the idea and some supportive of it.