analogue to digital broadcasting
18 October 2006
The Department of Communications is convening a Digital Migration Working
Group Plenary from 19 to 20 October 2006 at the Sheraton Hotel in Pretoria. The
plenary comes as the group is working on finalising the recommendations to the
Minister of Communications, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, by November 2006 instead
of October as was initially anticipated.
The recommendations to the Minister will inform the digital migration
strategy of South Africa and also indicate how the process will be managed
without any disruptions to the broadcasting sector in the country. It will also
look at how this process will benefit the country.
The migration to a digital platform will result in efficient use of the
broadcasting frequency spectrum, thereby freeing the frequency spectrum. For
instance where the public broadcaster, South African Broadcasting Corporation
(SABC), uses a particular amount to transmit one analogue channel it can
transmit up to 10 digital channels through digital signal transmission on the
same amount of frequency.
At the plenary, the committees of the Digital Migration Working Group namely
content, economic, technical and policy will present recommendations on the
aspects of their work on how the process can be successfully managed. Further,
some of the issues will include the time for switch-on from analogue to digital
including the dual illumination period.
The case for digital migration for South Africa is compelling. The
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to which the country is a member
has set an international deadline of 17 June 2015 for the switch off from
analogue to digital signal distribution and no analogue broadcasting will be
protected from this period onward. The ITU obligations further stipulate that
although analogue can continue beyond this date, however, it may not cause
interference to digital broadcasting and countries may not claim protection
from digital interference.
Some of the universal services issues would include addressing the impact of
migration to the lower income groups and the poor such as access to set top
boxes and other strategies to ensure increased household adoption rate.
Enquiries:
Albi Modise
Cell: 083 490 2871
Issued by: Department of Communications
18 October 2006
