The High Court, Accra, has quashed the decision of the National Communications Authority (NCA) to introduce conditional access for free-to-air (FTA) television.
That followed an application filed by the Ghana Independent Broadcasters’ Association (GIBA), which sought to quash NCA’s decision on grounds that the introduction of the conditional access system will block the content of Free-to-Air digital television.
In a ruling, the General Jurisdiction Division of the High Court, presided over by Justice Eric Baah, a Court of Appeal judge sitting as an additional High Court judge, quashed the NCA’s decision.
“The controlled access system had a real likelihood of affecting broadcast viewership, and will therefore affect the expected income and business plans of members of GIBA,” the Court declared in a response to the NCA’s position that GIBA had no capacity to initiate the action.
GIBA complained about the new standards on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and Direct-To-Home (DTH) published on the website of the NCA in 2019.
According to GIBA, the document published by the NCA had a new chapter, numbered 13, which contained Conditional Access and Middleware Applications and additional control features as minimum mandatory requirements, contradicting the original standards (document (GS1099: 2019) published by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), which is the statutory body mandated to do so.
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 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.
GIBA is of the view that the GSA standard must be adopted and used to regulate the operations of players in the broadcast space to ensure fairness to all.
It is based on these positions that the GBA filed the application at the High Court, arguing that the Free-to-Air broadcast services its members provide were relied on by nearly all Ghanaian households.
GIBA contended that the conditional access system which the NCA sought to implement would affect its viewers or customers and the business plans of its members.
