Broadcasting Digital Migration

Original Article: http://www.gov.za/about-government/government-programmes/digital-migration

Minister of Communications Ms Faith Muthambi took the first digital terrestrial television milestone, the households registration process for set-top-boxes, to the Square Kilometre Array community of Keimoes, Kai Garib Municipality, Northern Cape on 2 October 2015. This is being followed by other events around the country.

The first free set-top-boxes were handed over on 17 December.

“This is a very important milestone in the digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration project. This means that households with television sets in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) area will now receive fully subsidised set-top-boxes once they have completed the registration process,” said Muthambi at the Keimoes event.

Households in the districts that form part of the SKA radio telescope must visit their local post office from the 1st of October 2015 to apply for a subsidised television decoder.

                                

Background

South Africa has started with the process of migrating broadcasting signals from analogue to digital. This is done as a results of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) resolution that countries in region 1 (including Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East and the Islamic Republic of Iran) should migrate their broadcasting services from analogue to digital.

The Department of Communications (DoC) on 18 March 2015 gazetted the Amendment of the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy, issued under Government Gazette No 31408 on 8 September 2008.

Cabinet has approved the Amendment with the inclusion of the control system in the STB, which will be clearly defined when the policy is published, Minister in the Presidency responsible for Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Jeff Radebe said at the post Cabinet media briefing in Cape Town on Thursday, 5 March 2015.

The issue of whether to include the control system in the STBs has been a source of disagreement amongst free-to air broadcasters for some time now, which impacted negatively on the ability of the country to implement the broadcasting digital television within the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) agreed timelines. The ITU’s agreed deadline for the switch-off of analogue television signals is 17 June 2015.  South Africa did not meet this date.

On 26 June 2015 the North Gauteng High Court dismissed etv’s case to encrypt STBs, among other things, with costs. The court has affirmed that the amendment to the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy as published was in the best interest of the South African television viewers.

Communications Minister Faith Muthambi will soon announce the date for the migration of broadcasting services from analogue to digital. Bilateral Engagements will be concluded with our six neighbouring countries namely, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland in order to minimise cross border radio frequency spectrum interference.