Editors Comments

Signs of (DTT) life?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:02

Nothing has been heard about South Africa’s long-standing pending migration from analogue broadcasting to digital terrestrial television (DTT) since former Minister of Communications Roy Padayachie delivered a detailed progress report on the manifold and complex issues pertaining to the project on 9 September in Johannesburg. Of course Padayachie was thereafter promptly deployed to head the troubled Public Service & Administration ministry and was replaced by a former Deputy Minister of Communications, Dina Pule.

Screen Africa readers will recall that as per government’s original DTT plans, formulated way back in 2006, South Africa was to have completed digital migration by November 2011. Yet, here we are in January 2012 and the commercial launch of DTT has still to happen, even though the industry has been ready and waiting since it helped the DoC formulate the Draft Digital Migration Policy in April 2007. Early in 2011 Padayachie stated the launch date would be April 2012. That date was never again confirmed or denied.

Last week I sent an email to the Department of Communications (DoC) to enquire about the launch date and got a response (in itself encouraging as government departments can be non-responsive) to say that the DoC plans to hold a press briefing “at the end of January or beginning of February 2012” to “address all the enquiries”.

Well, it will be great to get some definite answers. But surely the launch date can’t still be April 2012 as so much has yet to be finalised and implemented - such as the consumer awareness programme, the subsidy scheme for DTT set top boxes (STBs) for South Africa’s poorer households, and a myriad of technical issues pertaining to digital transmission and the STBs themselves, not least of all their manufacture.

In the meantime the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is inviting all interested stakeholders to take part in its review of the existing analogue broadcasting regulatory frameworks to be in line with the digital era (see Breaking News story below). A positive move to be sure but one can’t help thinking that maybe this should have already happened some time ago. But then, ICASA receives its directives from the DoC. The policy review is scheduled to conclude at the end of March.

Reading through ICASA’s 145-page policy review document it says: “The switchover of broadcasting from analogue terrestrial television to digital terrestrial television is scheduled to take place in 2013”. December 2013 was the date set by cabinet in 2010, and confirmed by Padayachie during his tenure, for the completion of digital migration, which means that as from January 2014, the sole means to broadcast programmes on terrestrial frequencies will be digital. Even with an April 2012 launch that would be an impossibly tight deadline, given that most countries have taken between four and six years to complete migration.

Luckily, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will protect the analogue signal in Africa until June 2015. So let’s hope South Africa gets DTT-ed by then at least!

Joanna Sterkowicz

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