Digital Broadcasting Migration Working Group handover at CISR Conference Centre
in Pretoria
29 November 2006
Programme Director
Chairpersons of Digital Migration Working Group Committees
Delegates
Leaders of industry
Members of the media
Members of public
Labour representatives
Ladies and gentlemen
I wish to thank the Programme Director for this opportunity to addressing
this gathering of Digital Broadcasting Migration Working Group Handover.
Many of you will recall that in my 2005 Budget Speech in Parliament, I
announced the need to establish an inclusive Digital Migration Working Group.
This led to the establishment of four Committees namely Content, Technical,
Economics and Policy. I need to emphasise that the intention of establishing a
working group was to ensure participation of all affected stakeholders;
government, public, the broadcasting industry and content providers, network
operators, the equipment industry, commerce and trade, consumer organisation,
labour, cultural organisations, the Regulator and scientific institutions.
As we move along with this digital migration process, we need to ensure that
we keep that spirit of inclusiveness and think even for those people who might
not even be represented at various meetings of digital migration. By this I
refer to many South Africans in rural and marginalised sections of our
society.
Further, I wish to thank all members and representatives who have
participated in the work of this committees for your commitment to ensure that
the Digital Migration in South Africa is a success and in particular to the
Chairpersons of the Committees for steering the work of the Working Group up to
this far â namely, Johan Koster, Aynon Doyle, Karen Willenberg, Lara Kantor and
Linden Petzer.
As you may know, Digital Migration was long mooted as early as the late
1990s in South Africa. Our White Paper on Broadcasting Policy of 1998 had
already recognised the evolution of technologies in the Information and
Communication Technology Sector. It stressed the need to develop a Strategic
Framework to introduce Multi-channel services and to expand the distribution
infrastructure as a platform for growth of additional television services.
Through technological transformation, digital broadcasting can deliver more
benefits for the industry and the public, with reduced transmission costs in
the long term. As government, we have an obligation to ensure that services
reach every citizen of this country at an even more affordable rate.
I believe that the Digital Migration Working Group would have considered all
matters from socio-economic perspective and align with all technical issues
necessitated by this migration to ensure that we have a balanced policy
framework for the migration of broadcasting services from analogue to
digital.
Our Digital Migration Strategy should take the following strategic
imperatives into account:
* that broadcasting services should be seen within the context of
convergence of the Information and Communication Technologies.
* that Digital Migration should be driven by the need to expand services to all
South Africans particularly the poor whilst ensuring market growth and
socio-economic development.
* the migration to digital broadcasting regime will be a gradual transition of
discontinuities of analogue technologies.
* that digital migration should be a thoroughly managed process that creates
consumer and investment confidence.
With this, I would like to thank all the members of the Digital Broadcasting
Migration Working Group for selfless sacrifice and long working hours put into
this project to ensure that we produce a document that will act as a base for
migrating our broadcasting systems from analogue to digital technology. We as
the country and the Ministry, always aspire to be a global leader in harnessing
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) technologies for socio-economic
development.
We remain positive that digitisation of broadcasting systems will contribute
to our national goals of increasing competitiveness of the South African
economy while broadening the participation of our people thereof. We do not
underestimate the challenges that lie ahead, however we are forever hopeful
that together acting in partnership, we will achieve our goal of a successful
digital broadcasting migration.
President of the Republic often speaks of ICT cadres; you truly are the ICT
cadres of our times. We are positive that because of your selfless efforts many
ICT cadres are being born everyday from a small Impendle village in
KwaZulu-Natal to Sandton Central Business District in Gauteng. More earnest
work has just begun.
Thank you
Issued by: Department of Communications
29 November 2006
