The association contended that the standards amounted to attempts to implement dramatic changes in the television broadcast sector with the introduction of systems of control known as Conditional Access System (CAS). Whereas the GSA standard made CAS non-mandatory for free-to-air (FTA) television (TV) receivers, GIBA said the revision to the ‘legal’ standard by the Ministry of Communications made CAS a mandatory requirement for the reception of all TV programmes carried on the nation’s only FTA digital broadcasting facility. That requirement means that one needs to acquire a special decoder, with proprietary software, before watching any FTA TV programme in the country. Unfair competitionBeyond the restriction on access to FTA TV, it said, the process and partners helping to implement them raised issues of unfair competition in favour of a foreign company. “The special decoder shall be controlled by conditional access software and Middleware applications to be provided by a foreign company called Verimatrix, selected solely by the ministry as its partner.

Source: GhanaWeb January 08, 2020 09:00 UTC