Upington – Communications Minister Faith Muthambi has commended the installation of the first batch of government subsidised set-top boxes (STBs) in Keimoes in the Northern Cape.
The Minister on Thursday said the development signals progress in the country’s digital migration process.
“… We are glad that we’ve started to deliver to South Africans. We are not the generation of leaders who want to report failure to the nation.
“The installation of the STBs is a confirmation that the South African broadcasting industry has begun the process to switch from analogue to digital broadcasting. To some people, digital migration seemed to be one of those difficult projects to implement but we are saying digital broadcasting is now a reality.”
Minister Muthambi was speaking to SAnews in Keimoes, which is located in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) area. The Minister oversaw the installation of the first government subsidised STB at the house of senior citizen Marie Slinger.
Minister Muthambi urged other residents in the area to visit their nearest post office to register for a free STB. Over 2 400 households in the area have registered to receive STBs in line with government’s commitment to provide five million indigent home owners, who own TV sets, with free decoders.
The registration process of the subsidised STBs kicked off at a public event in Keimoes at the beginning of October. Government will distribute 23 000 free STBs to the community around the SKA area.
Today’s event in the Northern Cape is a milestone in the country’s move from analogue to digital broadcasting. Currently, terrestrial broadcasting in other parts of the country is still broadcast in an analogue transmission.
The digital broadcasting project was handed over to Minister Muthambi in January 2015 and this was followed by the gazetting of the Digital Terrestrial Television Policy in March.
Realising that the country would miss the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) June 17 deadline to switch to digital broadcasting, Minister Muthambi signed bilateral agreements with neighbouring countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland to mitigate cross border radio frequency interference.
During the analogue era, some of the residents in the communities around the SKA used to receive one channel, while others were unable to watch television because of poor signals. Now they get free additional channels including SABC news channel 404, the Parliamentary channel and SABC ENCORE.
A delighted Gogo Slinger said: “For many years, I could access three television channels but the problem was that the television picture quality was very poor even if we tried to move the aerial around.
“I’m really grateful that I became one of the South Africans chosen to receive the government subsidised decoders… Now the digital era has brought more channels with crystal clear pictures. We thank our government for prioritising us so that we become the first South Africans to enjoy the benefits of this project.”
Another resident who received a free STB is Florida Cloete of Kakamas. She told SAnews that she has not been watching television for many years because of the poor signal.
“I’ve been using my television set as a decoration but now that digital migration is upon us, I’m able to watch sport, news, health and Parliamentary channels and as if that is not enough, I’m also able to access 19 SABC radio stations,” she said.
Making the switch
Depending on the geographical factors in signal distribution, the terrestrial signal will not be able to cover 100% of the population. Certain regions like the SKA communities, will receive the digital signal via direct to home (DTH) satellite transmission and digital terrestrial transmission (DTT).
However, it is only 16% of the population who will receive the digital signal via DTH, while the remaining percentage will use STBs. - SAnews.gov.za
