State signal provider Sentech is confident the country will meet the international deadline to turn off analogue broadcasting, despite there still being a number of outstanding issues.
SA is set to turn on digital broadcasting next April, in preparation for shutting off the old-style signal distribution by the end of 2013. The country's deadline is about 18 months ahead of the International Telecommunications Union's mid-2015 date for when it will stop protecting analogue signal.
However, there are still several issues that need to be wrapped up before SA can turn on digital television, and even more aspects that must be sorted out before anyone will be able to receive the upgraded signal.
Addressing a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee meeting on labour and public enterprises, CEO Setumo Mohapi said Sentech would meet the deadline unless there were major changes to the current policy.
Mohapi was responding to committee member Mtikeni Sibande, who raised concerns that several digital television issues were outstanding, such as the Broadcasting Digital Migration policy review and the migration regulations review.
Sibande said Sentech may have problems meeting the 2015 deadline. He did not make reference to SA's 2013 deadline.
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) recently repelled the previous set of regulations.
In an explanatory document, the authority said the technological standard has changed since it published the previous set of regulations in February last year. At the beginning of this year, SA decided to migrate using the DVB-T2 standard, and not its forerunner, DVB-T.
As a result, it has needed to amend the regulations. Public hearings are set to be held before the end of the year.
Making progress
Mohapi said, at the end of March, the signal provider had covered 60% of the population with the DVB-T standard. These sites would now need to be upgraded, a process that had to be completed by March next year, with an aim to reach 74% coverage, he said.
This target might not be achieved, however, because of supply-chain management issues, Mohapi said.
CFO Protas Phili explained that Sentech had under-spent in the first half of the year, because of a board decision to suspend supply-chain management activities to ensure it was beefed up to comply with best market practices.
Mohapi explained that, among the work to be completed was the need to put up masts higher than 150 metres, on to which transmitters weighing between two and three tons had to be installed.
Migration is the single biggest infrastructure intervention carried out since the introduction of TV in the 1970s, said Mohapi.
Repeated attempts to gain clarity as to when the outstanding issues will be finalised from the Department of Communications were unsuccessful.
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