Sentech rolls out digital terrestrial system
Frans Lindeque, Sentech executive for digital services, says Sentech is currently running digital terrestrial television (DTT) test transmissions from its main broadcast tower site in Brixton, Johannesburg, and will roll out DTT services to other sites as well as rural areas over the next five years.
"The estimated cost to achieve 92% coverage of the population for DTT is in the region of one billion rand. By 2009, Sentech will have covered around 78% of the country’s population with DTT, ahead of the World Cup a year later," he said.
The advantage of DTT is its ‘spectral efficiency’, which allows a number of digital channels to be broadcast within the same bandwidth as one analogue channel. This in turn frees up the other frequencies for value added services including inter-activity, e-commerce as well as additional channels and broadcasters, explained Lindeque.
DTT will provide users with many more options in terms of services, channels and broadcasters, both regional and national. Advertising revenue is also expected to grow significantly as a result, he added.
While the SENTECH Tower in Brixton covers a large portion of Gauteng, Lindeque says Sentech will make use of all its existing high sites, 220 in total, to facilitate DTT broadcasts. In addition, new sites will be established later on to cover those areas not covered by analogue services currently.
It is anticipated that network upgrades will take two years. Once the upgrades are completed, Sentech will begin the process of dual illumination – running DTT and analogue systems side by side. This will continue for a number of years.
"The decisions to switch off analogue services will be decided by government for PBS (Public Broadcast Services) services and by commercial entities, where commercial broadcast services are affected," said Lindeque.
There are many factors which will affect the decision, including access and affordability.
He said DTT viewers will also require a decoder or set top box like the ones currently used for satellite TV reception. These units currently cost in the region of 984 rand for a fairly advanced decoder, which would prove too expensive for some or most of the TV-watching population.
It is possible however that these costs could be brought down to as low as 300 rand, depending on volumes to be sold as well as the kind of value added services which are to be implemented on the DTT platform, he added.
However, once DTT is up and running and current analogue services have been migrated to DTT, it will be possible to introduce high definition TV (HDTV), which makes provision for excellent quality, wide screen pictures.
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