By Nthambeleni Gabara
Pretoria - The switching on of transmitters by television signal distributor, SENTECH, is a step closer to the roll-out of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) project, says Communications Minister Faith Muthambi.
This follows the announcement by SENTECH on Monday that two of the four Greenfield DTT transmitter sites, located in Harrismith in the Free State and Ngqeleni in the Eastern Cape, were recently switched on. This transmitter site expansion ensures a digital terrestrial population coverage of 84.46% and a geographic coverage of 58.49%.
“We view the rolling out of the digital broadcasting network by SENTECH as a step closer towards migrating to a DTT broadcasting system. This clearly confirms that DTT is a reality… we are working hard with all our stakeholders to deliver this project to South Africans,” she said.
SENTECH’s DTT Project Manager Nicolaas Jobse said: “It was once again a privilege to achieve the go live milestone for two new Greenfield sites. Although the two sites are similar, the terrain and circumstance are vastly different and every site posed its own unique challenges.
“With all the different disciplines that are involved with completing these sites, team work remains the cornerstone for achievement and the dependencies that each have on the final outcome. With all the experience gained over the last 18 months on these two sites, one becomes much more equipped to manage the outstanding Greenfield sites.”
Currently, there are 180 DTT sites that are operating throughout South Africa.
“The last two Greenfield sites are expected to be on air by March 2016 which will increase the population coverage to 85.20% and geographical coverage to 58.91%. In total we will have 182 DTT operation sites throughout South Africa,” he said.
In March earlier this year, SENTECH switched on all 178 of its DTT migration transmitters.
In addition, to these sites are the four Greenfield sites namely Harrismith, Burgersfort in Limpopo, Holy Cross and Ngqeleni, which were built from scratch to ensure maximum Digital Terrestrial coverage in the far lying areas of South Africa.
The construction of the Harrismith DTT site including the mast erection took approximately 23 months to complete, with some challenges that the SENTECH team experienced accessing the site as it is located on top of the Platberg Mountain.
The team had to build a new road to the site and a lot of blasting activity took place in order to achieve the designed anchor blocks. There was a delay in commissioning all the installed electrical equipment due to the unavailability of electrical power supply until mid-June 215.
Access to Ngqeleni is fairly good and easily accessible for construction vehicles and no major problems were encountered during the construction phase of the site. The mast construction was completed in mid-May 2015.
Various challenges were experienced with electrical reticulation installation but the team managed to obtain reliable power supply by 25 June 2015. - SAnews.gov.za
