Analogue TV Switch Off - Afrikan Heroes

South Africa to stay on analogue TV until 2037

April 4, 2022

The controversial law on analogue TV in South Africa has been brought to rest with the announcement by the country’s cabinet that South Africa will not migrate from analogue to digital terrestrial television until 2037. The project has proved “too complex to manage”, and so a decision has been made to stay on analogue broadcasts for at least the next 15 years.

By 2037, depending on how the market has changed, the government – in consultation with industry players and sector regulator Icasa – will at that point decide whether it makes sense to extend analogue broadcasts for a further 15 years, to 2052.

The surprise announcement is likely to be met with dismay by industry players, especially telecommunications operators that had been expecting to get access as soon as this year to valuable radio frequency spectrum through the migration of the country’s television broadcasters to digital technology.

The digital dividend bands, at 700MHz and 800MHz, were meant to be freed up

The digital dividend bands, at 700MHz and 800MHz, were meant to be freed up through the broadcast digital migration project but will now remain in the hands of the SABC, e.tv and other broadcasters for the foreseeable future.

Government first began planning the switchover to digital in 2006, when then-communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri committed to getting the project done by December 2010. That deadline was missed, as was the later commitment – of June 2015 – made to the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations.

“Given the enormous complexities around managing the broadcasting digital migration project, the cabinet has decided – in the interests of the television-viewing public – that analogue switch-off will be delayed until 31 March 2037,” a cabinet spokesman said.

The decision has taken the pressure off the broadcasters to complete the migration but it’s already raising the hackles of the country’s mobile telecoms operators that were eager to get access to the digital dividend bands.

The visibly irate CEO of one leading mobile operator, who asked not to be named, said: “Only a fool could have come up with this idea.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

South Africa’s North West to Switch Off Analogue TV

December 21, 2021

The South African Minister of Communications, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni

The North West region of South Africa will on Wednesday become the third province in South Africa to have its analogue television signals switched off. This comes as communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni pushes ahead with a plan to complete the national switch-off by early next year, despite objections from broadcasters.

The minister will travel to Zeerust in North West to oversee the switching off of the last analogue transmitter in the province. She will be joined by Keabetswe Modimoeng, the chairman of communications regulator Icasa.

Analogue TV broadcasts have already been terminated in the Free State and the Northern Cape – and there has been little apparent consumer backlash – with Mpumalanga and Limpopo set to follow by early January.

A real challenge may come when signals are switched off in provinces with major urban centres

A real challenge may come when signals are switched off in provinces with major urban centres, including Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape.

Ntshavheni has said government plans to decommission all analogue transmission sites by the end of January. This has led to anger in the broadcasting sector, particularly from eMedia Holdings, the parent of e.tv, which has threatened legal action if the minister presses ahead with her aggressive switch-off plan. eMedia argues that a 15-month switchover is more realistic as it would greatly reduce the risk of cutting off millions of mainly indigent viewers. Viewers without a set-top box or a compatible digital television could be left without a broadcasting signal at the end of January.

But Ntshavheni appears determined to press ahead with the long-delayed project at speed – it has been more than a decade since the government missed its original deadline to complete the migration.

The main purpose of the project is to release the “digital dividend” – the 700MHz and 800MHz frequency bands used by broadcasters – so it can be sold to telecommunications operators at a planned spectrum auction now set down for March 2022.

A “digital restacking” project – to migrate digital broadcasters out of the digital dividend bands – also still needs to take place before the operators can take full advantage of the spectrum.

In this regard, Icasa on Tuesday said that the final radio frequency spectrum assignment plan (RFSAP) dealing with frequencies between 470MHz and 694MHz, which it published recently, provides a plan for a phased approach in implementing digital terrestrial broadcasts through a single frequency network.

“The RFSAP in this frequency band expedites and fast-tracks the implementation of digital terrestrial television, and the concurrent release of the first and second digital dividend spectrum for the deployment of … mobile broadband communications,” the regulator said.