End of the road for StarSat in South Africa

OnDigital Media, parent of DStv rival StarSat, is no more. Some 15 years after being licensed, the company has been placed into liquidation.

The development calls into doubt any hope by StarSat’s paying customers that refunds owed to them following the forced shutdown of the company’s operations last October will ever be paid.

“OnDigital Media, the independent broadcasting licence holder that processed StarSat’s payments, has been liquidated,” Jan Hendrick Harmse, marketing manager at StarSat told TechCentral via text message on Thursday.

Icasa brought StarSat’s operations to a grinding halt last October when the communications regulator, working with the police, conducted a raid on StarSat’s Midrand offices.

During the raid, Icasa confiscated equipment critical to StarSat’s broadcasting operations, cutting off paying customers in South Africa and 23 other African markets where StarSat shareholder StarTimes operates pay-television services that compete with MultiChoice Group.

The raid by Icasa came after the regulator ordered StarSat to shut down its operations due to OnDigital Media’s failure to renew its broadcasting licence timeously as required under the Electronic Communications Act.

Court case that wasn’t

“Despite numerous reminders, ODM submitted its licence renewal application after the expiry date on 10 November 2023. The authority does not have the legislative or regulatory mandate to consider a renewal application for a licence that has already expired,” Icasa said at the time.

Speaking to TechCentral in the days following the raid, StarSat head of public affairs and strategy Pule Mabe said there were many occasions where the broadcaster tried to engage with Icasa to resolve the licensing issue, but Icasa was “slow to respond to letters and meeting requests”.

StarSat vowed to fight the matter in court, even accusing Icasa of a hidden political agenda. Mabe said Icasa “may have contravened” the Icasa Act in the way it conducted the raid. He also alleged that in obtaining the warrant to conduct the raid, Icasa approached the court ex parte, “meaning that in approaching the magistrate, we should have been present to also state our case”, he said.

Read: StarSat vows to fight on amid Icasa licensing dispute

Despite numerous attempts for comment, StarSat never responded to any of TechCentral’s requests for an update on its supposed court action. The StarSat website, meanwhile, still gives browsers the option to sign up for its services, even though no broadcasts are available.  – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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Icasa raids StarSat, pulls plug on infrastructure