Switching on

SA is finally turning on digital TV next week; albeit in the remote Karoo region where there cannot be too many people with television sets. The launch was set to happen today, but was delayed because of a skateboarding competition - yes really.

Yet, the turn on will prove that digital television - using the European DVB-T2 standard - works and will shortly become a reality for the other 11 million odd households that own sets across the country.

SA will have to wait for all these benefits, keeping many South Africans from participating in the digital economy and moving into the 21st Century along with the rest of the world.

Nicola Mawson

Switch-on has been about six years in the making, after Cabinet decided was back in 2006 to migrate to digital terrestrial television using the European standard, although back then the country mooted moving using the forerunner of DVB-T.

DVB stands for Digital Video Broadcasting and the T denotes the fact that the signal is sent out terrestrially, via an antennae. The shift to the standard is arguably the single biggest leap forward since sets were turned on in SA in 1976, after the then government rid itself of the notion that the black box was evil.

The fact that switch-on is finally happening, after several missteps, is to be celebrated. Much of SA's decoder industry and the state signals provider, Sentech, have been gearing up for several years and several almost lost hope while government dragged its feet a few years ago over which standard to use.

The entire process has been marred by delay after delay, ever since SA signed up to move to a digital broadcasting platform about six years ago; and a lack of cohesion from the top means any potential benefit will be pushed out yet again.

In 2006, Cabinet decided to implement digital TV, based on the widely-used European DVB-T standard. In 2007, former minister communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri set November 2008 for switch on, with migration to have happened by November 2011.

In November 2008, local broadcasters started piloting digital TV, using DVB-T. Sentech started rolling out transmitters and set-top box (STB) manufacturers also geared up in anticipation of the need to manufacture at least 10 million decoders for the local market, spending at least R700 million in the process.

Then came her successor Siphiwe Nyanda's 2010 dalliance with the Brazilians, pausing the entire programme, while SA “umed and ahed” over which standard would offer the best results for SA.

Then, in January last year, former communications minister Roy Padayachie enthusiastically announced that SA would be moving to digital TV using the upgraded European DVB-T2 standard, garnering him much applause from stakeholders because at long last, things were moving forward.

However, the country is nowhere close to reaping all the rewards of going digital as there is still much work to be done.

For starters, while the improved signal is now set to be broadcast to areas that could never receive a signal before, very few people will be able to pick it up, because there are no set-top boxes on the market.

The state has put aside R2.45 billion to fund as much as 70% of the cost of the boxes for around five million houses who just can't afford the cost - estimated at R400 per unit. And, while requests for proposals have gone out, the tender has yet to be awarded.

Retail boxes are also not available yet, because a few issues still have to be wrapped up, like the contentious set-top box control saga. Meant to stop subsidised boxes from being stolen and flogged outside of SA, the software - or rather who gets to implement it - has caused yet another snag in the process.

Etv - the free to air broadcaster - has taken umbrage with the Department of Communications, because it has chosen Sentech to handle the encryption software. The broadcaster points out that this is a problem, because Sentech's “encrypted” signal has been hacked before.

So, off to court they go, a full two weeks after SA's first digital signal hits the airwaves. The case could well stall migration, because boxes cannot be made until this issue is sorted out, and court cases have a habit of dragging on for quite some time.

The endless delays - probably because someone just didn't sit down and come up with a plan to start off with - mean that the benefit will be pushed out. And that's a pity.

Digital TV is meant to be far superior to the bog standard stuff those unlucky enough to not have satellite have to watch. It enables many more channels, and for people with fancy sets, high-definition can become a reality.

Gone will be the days of people trying not to fall off rooftops while adjusting the aerial, because a low-flying plane left it slightly askew in its wake. With digital, there either is a picture, or there isn't.

Jobs will be created, thousands of them, because someone needs to make set-top boxes, install the decoders, fix them, set up antennas... you get the picture.

Yet, the biggest dividend of moving to digital is that all the channels will be moved up against each other, freeing up the space that was previously needed to handle spillover. This means more channels, and an opportunity to boost creative content industries.

It also means more space to roll out more broadband. Especially, as the lower end of the band - around 800MHz - is ideal for long-term evolution in rural areas. Ah, and government wants 100% broadband penetration by 2020, and mobile is the way to go in areas where it doesn't make sense to string copper cables.

Alas, SA will have to wait for all these benefits, keeping many South Africans from participating in the digital economy and moving into the 21st Century along with the rest of the world.

But hey, at least we're getting there slowly. Eventually.