THE BIG READ

MultiChoice frets over TV revolution

Icasa hearings add to online streaming woes for pay-TV giant

29 April 2018 - 00:26 By NICK HEDLEY

When the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa begins its public hearings into pay-TV, central to which is the dominance of MultiChoice, it will have to consider if it is not more than a decade too late for an industry fast moving away from satellite broadcasting and onto the digital frontier.
It's this shift that has the Naspers-owned pay-TV operator facing an existential crisis amid a barrage of fresh competition in the form of Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube. Competition that the pay-TV owner, launched 22 years ago, has never faced in a South African market where it has dominated the likes of e.tv and state broadcaster SABC...

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