A total of 16 applicants are vying for the contested crown or crowns, depending on how many licences the communications authority will issue, a question Sekgoela declined to comment on.
“At this stage, I cannot divulge the number of licences that are going to be issued,” he said when asked by Bizcommunity.com to reveal the number of successful licensees.
“Remember, when we invited interested parties to apply, we did not say that there should be a specific number of applicants in this process. So, we also would like to keep the number of granted licences a well-guarded secret at least until the date of announcement.”
The venue of the announcement will be communicated shortly, Sekgoela added.
In terms of Section 9 of the Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005, ICASA said it received 18 applications in 2006 in response to an ITA (Invitation to Apply) for commercial satellite and cable subscription broadcasting services licences as published in Government Gazette No. 28455 dated 31 January 2006.
The following is the list of all original applicants for commercial TV and their proposed station names:
World Space and Multichannel have since withdrawn their applications for reasons known to themselves, leaving the ‘race' with only 16 ‘runners'.
