The National Communications Authority (NCA) has said it would take action against the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and Sweden-based Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB), owners of SMART TV, if they do not end the commercial pilot digital terrestrial television (DTT) services. Mr. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko of the Frequency Management Division of the NCA told the GNA in an interview that GBC and NGB had no authorization to start any pilot commercial services yet. “If GBC maintains an entrenched position and refuses to cooperate with the regulator, the necessary enforcement measures will be taken against them,” he said. The Ministry of Communications, through the NCA, has directed all independent broadcasters licensed for DTT to wait for policy guidelines to be completed and passed into law for a smooth unified nationwide migration from analogue to digital TV. The draft guidelines have been completed by the National Digital Migration Committee (NDMC) and submitted to the Ministry of Communications on August 30 for approval and forwarding to Parliament. While the other licensed broadcasters are waiting for the policy guidelines to come into force, GBC and NGB have started their service under the guise of a commercial pilot service without the authorization of the NCA and clearance from the National Media Commission (NMC), Mr. Fianko stated. The commercial services started months ago when the owners launched it under the SMART TV brand name against the NCA ‘s warning, Mr. Fianko said. According to the NCA, in April the NGB invited individual officials of the NCA including Mr. Joshua Peprah, the Director of Regulatory Administration, to the launch of SMART TV on April 30. Mr. Peprah wrote back to NGB on April 23, 2010 asking them to suspend the launch because they did not have TV broadcasting authorization or a license for a DTT service. NGB only has a dealership license to sell decoders and not to do television broadcasting, it said. But on April 28, two days before the proposed launch of SMART TV, GBC wrote a letter, signed by the Director-General, William Ampem-Darko, to the NCA informing them of some contract they had with NGB to do commercial pilot DTT service in Accra and Kumasi under the brand name, SMART TV. GBC named NGB as a consultant, but the NCA said the contract document itself did not corroborate GBC’s claims, and the GBC eventually aborted that plan. “The provisional authorization for the second frequency assigned to GBC has since been withdrawn,” Mr Fianko said. “While the NCA was under the impression that GBC, like all the members of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association, (GIBA) were working within the plan for a smooth nationwide migration, GBC and NGB started operating the service and selling SMART TV decoders on GTV.” Mr. Fianko said since then the GBC and NGB have both failed to attend meetings of the NDMC and have been dodgy about, what he termed, “their controversial relationship.” Meanwhile, the Executive Council of GIBA is pushing the NCA to take action against GBC and NGB. In two letters dated May 5, 2010 and June 18, 2010, GIBA asked the NCA why SMART TV and GBC had been allowed to start operations while the other stakeholders were still waiting for the policy guidelines. GIBA complained that: “Some of our members had to slow-down on their already existing commercial activities in the digital terrain to complement the works done by the NDMC.” Meanwhile, some of the local channels, like TVAfrica, advertised on GTV as being part of the channels on SMART TV decoders, have asked NGB to take their names off the advert because they do not want to be part of the controversy. Source: GNA