NewsCentral Media reports that the digital terrestrial television (DTT) set-top boxes that the government plans to subsidise for five million of South Africa’s poorer households will include a return patch to provide basic Internet access.
Minister of Communications Dina Pule made an announcement to this effect on 6 June at the inaugural ICT Indaba in Cape Town. The Minister has previously stated that DTT will launch in the fourth quarter of this year.
On Friday 1 June the South African Communications Forum (SACF) held a press conference in Midrand announcing that it was lobbying government to include a return path in the subsidised STBs so that marginalised South Africans would be able to receive the Internet.
No announcement has been made regarding how the return path specifications will be written into the STB standard that was published by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) in April this year. (Additional source: TechCentral).
