Mamodupi Mohlala<\/a> said that she is ‘very surprised’ that ICASA says that it must wait for decoder availability before a cut-off date is laid down. According to Mohlala ICASA’s regulations are contrary to a cabinet decision that digital migration will happen by November 2011.<\/p>\nThe availability of digital TV set-top boxes is however a key component in delivering digital TV to consumers, and the date at which these devices will reach retail outlets will therefore influence other dates related to DTT.<\/p>\n
Mohlala recently told Radio 702 that digital TV set-top boxes will become available in October\/November 2010, and she encouraged consumers to invest in these devices to start receiving DTT signals.<\/p>\n
According to a recent Business Day report, however, Mohlala would apparently not commit to any deadline and merely said that the set-top boxes would see “the light of day” by the end of the 2010-11 financial year.<\/p>\n
The price for the set-top boxes will be in the region of R800 each, and Government is set to subsidize poor households to the tune of R2.45-billion.<\/p>\n
Sentech<\/strong><\/p>\nA key player in the digital TV rollout is Sentech, and according to Mohlala the parastatal is caught between a rock and a hard place.<\/p>\n
Sentech recently said that it has to date procured and rolled-out transmitter infrastructure to cover just over 50% of the population. “However, due to delays in the finalisation of the Frequency Spectrum Plan the DTT network has been switched on to provide only 33% population coverage,” Sentech said.<\/p>\n
Sentech further said that it plans to achieve 56% DTT population coverage by 31 March 2011 based on the current budget allocation, but also pointed to budgetary constraints which may hamper the process.<\/p>\n
Mohlala said that Sentech were waiting for the ICASA frequency plan before purchasing DTT equipment, but because of continual delays they decided to invest in equipment with the understanding that ICASA will use frequency band plans to accommodate their new equipment.<\/p>\n
This however did not happen – something which Mohlala said influenced Sentech’s DTT rollout and may well cause financial shortfalls.<\/p>\n
Industry concerns<\/strong><\/p>\nSome industry players have raised concerns about the delays in migrating television broadcasts, saying that it is hampering the growth of local technology companies and stifling opportunities for job creation.<\/p>\n
“Digital migration has been delayed repeatedly, and the earliest that South Africa will now enjoy full digital terrestrial broadcasts is mid-2013 – already 18 months later than initially expected,” Tellumat said in a press statement.<\/p>\n
According to Tellumat the delay is frustrating several local companies that are poised to produce the set-top boxes that viewers will need to receive and convert the new signals so they can still watch TV on their existing TV set. <\/p>\n
The procrastination has forced Tellumat and several other local players to put their production plans on hold.<\/p>\n
“We have spent money developing the intellectual property and investing in research and development in anticipation of business coming our way,” says Tellumat’s financial director Graham Meyer.<\/p>\n
“We are positioning ourselves to be one of the contractors for the subsidised devices because we have the technical know-how as well as the manufacturing capability. But without knowing exactly what the final specifications and final time lines will be, it’s difficult to begin.”<\/p>\n
Mohlala said that the Department of Communications is working with all role-players to try and find amicable solutions to the problems dogging DTT rollout in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Digital TV in SA<\/strong><\/a> << comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICASA blamed for not playing ball to make digital TV a reality by November 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadcasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}