Africa's SADC members to adopt uniform digital TV migration

Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member countries have adopted a united approach to digital television migration to help countries develop harmonious policies and regulations, and share experiences.

The 12-country economic bloc has set December 2013 as the deadline for all members to switch from analog to digital broadcasting, giving an 18-month grace period to sort out any policy, regulatory or operational challenges that the community may be faced with during the migration process. The global switchover announced by the International Telecommunication Union is mid-2015.

"Malawi is working together with the SADC team to ensure swift migration; a steering committee on digital migration has just been formulated comprising the Ministry of Information and Civic Education as the leader and Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority [MACRA] as the coordinator," said K. Masangano, deputy director in charge of broadcasting at MACRA.

SADC members include South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia.

Africa faces the challenge of aligning policy and legislation to ease the migration to digital broadcasting, in terms of investment in technology and consumer awareness.

"The migration process requires policy harmonization," said Joel Chacha, frequency management engineer at the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority. "There are financial and technical implications and questions on what will happen to incumbent operators' transmission equipment and infrastructure and whether the signal will be relinquished to the authorities for re-assignment," said Chacha.

One of the major challenges facing many African countries concerns the future re-use of premium spectrum that will be freed from the current allocations for analog broadcasting services.

The freed spectrum is being considered as "digital dividend," and countries will have to decide whether to use it to enhance rural coverage or to redistribute it to private bidders.

To allow proper migration, consumers will have to invest in modern television sets or buy set-top boxes that will convert older TVs to digital. Most of the set-top boxes are imported from Asia, and there was a big debate in South Africa whether the government should subsidize imported boxes or invest in local manufacturing.

This debate has led SADC to suggest a unified standard for the region and allow some countries to manufacture the boxes and distribute within the region. Malawi is currently depending on imported boxes but will rely on the SADC recommendations.

"Malawi is also looking at the prospect of benefiting from a regional approach being taken by SADC by agreeing to the standards that are going to be agreed within the region for STB. It is expected that once such agreements are done, manufacturing of a standardized STB within the region by such countries like Mauritius and South Africa will benefit the region in the migration process," said MACRA's Masangano.

In the SADC region, the organization supports the strengthening of the public relations departments of the regulatory authorities to address consumer issues as well as to educate people on issues arising from the migration.

SADC member countries met last month and decided to organize a meeting in Mauritius next month to discuss challenges and progress in digital migration.