Digital TV migration will cost you

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

Full Profile

E-mail

The Public Service Commission (PSC) recently released their State of the Public Service Report 2009, aiming to provide an important and impartial overview of trends in the Public Service.  “The reports are used to inform the strategy of the transformation of the Public Service and are widely consulted by other stakeholders outside government as well,” the PSC states.

One of the key findings of the latest PSC report is that transparency must be fostered by providing the public with timely, accessible and accurate information.  Here is the PSC warned that “language as a possible barrier becomes particularly important when fairly sophisticated decisions and processes of government are involved.”

The PSC warned that the process of switching over from Analogue Terrestrial Television (ATT) to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) is guilty of not adequately informing the public about the full extent as to how this migration will influence them.

“In terms of this process, as from November 2008 there will be DTT coverage in certain areas, and by 2011 the country will have migrated fully to such digital broadcasting. It is expected that digital broadcasting will free up radio frequency space, thus allowing the country to have more channels that can focus on education, youth, business development, and others.”

“However, an important point to note is that with this migration, many television sets will become obsolete since they were designed to receive ATT and not DTT. These TV sets would require Set Top Boxes in order to receive the DTT signal, and it is expected that the boxes will each cost between R400 and R700.”

The PSC said that although government anticipates spending of about R2.45 billion to subsidise up to 70% of the Set Top Box costs for about five million poor households, the fact remains that poor communities are going to be affected significantly by the migration and that they will still be expected to fork out money if they are to receive a television transmission after 2011.

“This whole process is fairly sophisticated but impacts directly on the poor. Unless government ensures that it is clearly communicated to the public in accessible language, it may result in some members of the public resisting the migration. In fact, perceptions may exist that the migration was rolled out just before the World Cup so that those without DTT may be denied the opportunity to watch World Cup matches on TV,” the PSC says.

The original digital switch migration was from November 2008 to November 2011, but ICASA recently said that it will engage with Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda about extending this time frame.

Digital TV migration discussion