At a media conference, held in Johannesburg on Friday, M-Net disclosed the outcome of its internal technical investigation, received on Thursday at 5pm.

M-Net also announced that it has extended the investigation by appointing an external communications engineering consultant to review the internal report and produce an independent report.

The review will be conducted by Dr Neel Smuts (Pr.Eng; BSc, B.Eng; University of Stellenbosch; FSAIEE). Due to the complexity of the multiple technical issues at hand, it could take a while to complete the analysis.

The internal investigation was done by Grapevine Interactive, a supplier to M-Net. Their investigation revealed that while they had planned for double the number of SMS votes as compared to the previous season of 'Idols', the popularity of this year's 'Idols' competition resulted in an unprecedented number of SMS votes being received in the final hour, five times more than the previous season in the same period. This created capacity problems.

M-Net CEO, Patricia Scholtemeyer, said it had been imperative for the broadcaster to assess all possible risks in the delivery process of SMS?s thoroughly.

"We have to fully understand what went wrong during the Idols final, not only for the sake of transparency, but also to learn valuable lessons to eliminate similar problems in future."

She went on to say that M-Net would implement possible format and certain technical changes to future Idols seasons. These will include: the implementation of KPMG recommendations, increased capacity planning, additional and ongoing monitoring throughout the value chain in real time, and commitment and collaboration with all operators and service providers.

In addition, M-Net may consider eliminating SMS voting from future shows or limiting the number of votes per cell phone number.

As there were more than 600 000 SMS votes not included in the viewer's competition draw, M-Net has decided to hold another viewer's draw on Tuesday next week in which a Citroen C1 can be won.

To ensure that the draw is fair and all valid votes cast from the Top 10 phase carry an equal weighting in the draw, Professor Fatti, Senior Statistician at DMSA and Emeritus Professor School of Statistics and Science University, implemented a two-stage sampling formula. The draw will be overseen by KPMG.

A handover of Jason Hartman's prizes will take place next Wednesday, 20 May at 3pm at Montecasino's Open Piazza. At the same time the name of the winner of the additional viewer's competition draw will be announced.

The two 'Idols' winners will perform at the IPL closing ceremony at the Liberty Life Wanderers Stadium on Sunday, 24 May.