{"id":15884,"date":"2010-10-17T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T10:13:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-17T12:13:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-17T10:13:00","slug":"digital-tv-migration-on-track-for-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/15884-digital-tv-migration-on-track-for-2011.html","title":{"rendered":"Digital TV migration on track for 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

The minister of communications, Siphiwe Nyanda<\/strong><\/a>, said that South Africa is on track to begin migrating to digital television broadcasting in 2011 at a press briefing held this morning.<\/p>\n

Nyanda also said that he has assured industry that the uncertainty reigning over which broadcasting standard South Africa would adopt would be resolved by the end of this year.<\/p>\n

The South African Department of Communications (DoC) confused and infuriated industry earlier this year when suspended Director General Mamodupi Mohlala<\/a> stated that a standard for digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasts hadn’t been selected.<\/p>\n

Industry players such as e.tv, M-Net, the Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association (SADIBA) and South African Communications Forum (SACF), rubbished this statement.<\/p>\n

They all cited the Broadcasting Digital Migration Plan (BDMP) published by the DoC in 2008 as well as the migration regulations released by ICASA earlier this year.<\/p>\n

According to the policies and regulation, South Africa had selected the European Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T) standard.<\/p>\n

Nyanda confirmed that South Africa had independently selected DVB-T as its preferred digital television broadcasting standard and that it remains the country’s official decision.<\/p>\n

He also said that when South Africa signed an agreement with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2006 to use DVB-T we did so with reservations.<\/p>\n

Due to recent technological developments the whole SADC region decided to explore the possibility of using a different standard, Nyanda said. He emphasised that it wasn’t even South Africa that took the decision to review the choice of standard, but the whole region.<\/p>\n

The decision of which standard to use won’t be taken lightly, Nyanda assured interested parties. He said that industry and government have invested a lot in DVB-T and it would be taken into account.<\/p>\n

Sentech alone had invested over R500 million, Nyanda said.<\/p>\n

Nyanda added that the SADC task team that was established to review DTT broadcasting standards would report back in November. This is why he was able to tell the South African industry that the matter would be resolved by December.<\/p>\n

The delay caused by the review of digital broadcasting standards also hasn’t changed South Africa’s target switch-on date.<\/p>\n

Nyanda explained that he had re-established the Digital Dzonga, a body responsible for advising him on DTT migration, and they have reported that everything is still on track for a 2011 launch.<\/p>\n

“We’re on track until informed otherwise,” Nyanda said.<\/p>\n

Digital TV migration on track for 2011<\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The battle between DVB-T and ISDB-T\/ISDB-Tb will soon come to a head but South Africans can still look forward to receiving digital TV signals next year<\/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-15884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadcasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15884"}],"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=15884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}