Digital migration campaign goes to Lepelle-Nkumpi

Friday, April 7, 2017

Pretoria – Residents of Lepelle-Nkumpi will on Sunday join the digital migration movement when Communications Minister Ayanda Dlodlo leads a public awareness campaign in the Limpopo town.

South Africa is migrating from analogue to digital broadcasting, in line with the global trend aimed at freeing broadcasting spectrum. Some of the many perks of digital migration are clearer television pictures and sound – something those living in Lepelle-Nkumpi will soon get to experience.

“The primary objective of digital migration is to clear the radio frequency spectrum currently occupied by broadcasters, and thus facilitate the provision of wireless mobile broadband services and other innovative applications that benefit communities,” said Minister Dlodlo.

Many border-lying areas in the country, including towns around the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) site in the Northern Cape, have received set-top boxes (STBs), which enable a regular analogue TV set to process digital signals.

Government aims to hand out five million STBs to indigent households across the country. The Post Office is the distributing agent for STBs to poor TV-owning households. To register, one has to be a South African citizen in a household earning less than R3 200 a month.

There are 585 840 projected households that qualify for STBs in Limpopo. The current average monthly registrations processed by Post Office for the period 1 to 31 March 2017 is 5 550 in that province.

Along with the STBs, government has also included an electronic programme guide (EPG), which also includes an eight-day programme schedule for each channel. This will enable the beneficiaries of the STBs to plan their television viewing much better.    

“The television viewing experience of qualifying households will also never be the same again, once the government subsidised STBs have been installed. They will be able to enjoy improved picture and sound quality,” Minister Dlodlo said.

Digital migration will create new business opportunities and introduce more players in the market, thus contribution towards creating entrepreneurs and jobs in the broadcasting and digital content-generation field. - SAnews.gov.za