Where are they going to get that money from? Selling what? We talk about ±R2 500 mil!
Gov approved long time ago the amount of R 4.3 Billion for this subsidy program, to be implemented by one of the most "illustrious" (corrupt and inefficient) Gov departments, USAASA, the universal service and access agency of SA.
Initially they were talking about 5 million households, now the latest briefing on this issue mentions that 4 million STBs will be handed out for free, and 2 million STBs will be sold at reduced price.
Acc to a recent BD article : "SA is preparing to migrate from analogue to digital this year." An estimated 11-million households will have to buy a set-top box at a cost of R700 to R750 to enable their TV sets to receive the new digital signal, but due to the delays the prices are likely to escalate.
According to the most recent digital terrestrial television readiness briefing, SA has 4-million TV households earning less than R1,500 a month that have to get a free set-top box, another 2-million TV households earning R1,501 to R3,200 will receive and pay R225.
The 2015 Budget Review shows that the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA was allocated R 791m for set-top boxes last year and R181.16m will be advanced in this financial year, plus R196m for project management and distribution with a further R 589.38m and R272m planned for the next two budgets.
In the next few weeks R4.3bn worth of tenders on digital migration are set to be issued.
Read the whole article on :
http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/te...ng-spectrum-will-help-subsidise-set-top-boxes and the article on :
http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/media/2015/03/05/battle-for-set-top-box-control-heats-up.
Actually not 11 million households have to buy a STB. In the latest population census it was estimated that about 11.5 million households have a TV set. Of which nowadays more than 5 m have subscribed to dstv, and another 80,000 still to Starsat, and guesstimate another 100,000 now have OVHD. So for the most 6 to 7 m households will want a DTT STB.
Whenever DTT is finally implemented it will have cost the taxpayers R 10 to R 20 Billion. And the technology totally outdated, expect DTT to be a "grand" success as much as Sentech first venture in digital TV, the Vivid satellite platform was a great roaring commercial success.
Over about 13 years 60,000 Vivid decoders were sold.
