STAATSKOERANT, 24 JANUARIE 2014 No. 37261 While the principle of similar regulatory treatment for similar services might seem obvious, ensuring parity is not necessarily easy in practice. Traditional linear broadcasting, for example, has a range of requirements relating to prime-time (such as what types of public interest programming should be aired at times when audiences are most likely to be watching) and ICASA has set watershed periods for different broadcasters to protect children from unsuitable content. Such requirements, however, are not necessarily relevant to on-demand content providers and audiences can schedule their own prime time viewing with new technologies such as interactive television recording devices such as personal video recorders (PVR). There are also a range of different approaches which could be adopted to achieve such parity. Linked to this, is the need to consider whether or not the current approach of regulation by business model is still appropriate. Services have varying regulatory obligations based on their business model - with lighter touch regulation for subscription services. An issue for the review is whether or not such regulation by business model will in the new environment be in line with principles of fair competition and regulatory parity, noting that these services are increasingly competing with FTA broadcasters for advertising revenue (see Chapter 3). When considering these issues and their implications on the policy framework, it is also important to recognise that audiences may have different expectations of different mediums. In submissions on the Framing Paper, several stakeholders also raised the issue of net neutrality as critical in the changing environment to ensuring regulatory parity and fair competition between different content providers. They argued that the new policy framework must ensure net neutrality so that all data available on the internet is treated equally by network providers. These stakeholders raised concerns that if the policy framework did not enforce net neutrality, broadband providers might use their last mile infrastructure to block internet applications, content (websites, services, protocols) and competitors by, for example, using deep packet inspection to discriminate between over the top broadcasting services or applications. Arguments against net neutrality, internationally, generally centre around the impact this will have on the availability of bandwidth given the amount of content that will be made available. Consideration of all these issues has to be guided by the overall objectives set for the policy framework and therefore be based on how best to ensure the identified public interest goals for the sector are met. 8.4 Regulatory Parity and Internet Content An extension of the debate on regulatory parity and the decisions on what content is or not regulated, is the issue of cross-border audio-visual services. The internet has global reach. New technologies will therefore allow South Africans to access content from across the world and provide opportunities for South African stories to reach an international audience. International and local audio-visual and audio content delivered via the internet will increasingly compete with traditional South African channels and stations for audiences, advertising and subscription revenue. This Green Paper process has to recognise such off-shore services in order to ensure a new policy framework is balanced. A key issue of the policy process will be how to reinforce South African broadcasting and other content services to ensure they can effectively compete with these international services. 55 This gazette is also available free online at www.gpwonline.co.za 59