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Johannesburg - A government decision to encrypt set-top boxes (STBs) could put South Africa’s process of digital migration “back to where it was a year ago”, says the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The migration from analogue to digital broadcast in South Africa has been delayed amid raging debates among broadcasters over whether or not South Africa should adopt set-top box controls.
A splitting of the Department of Communications and the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services by President Jacob Zuma last year also caused confusion over where the responsibility for digital migration rested.
Set-top boxes are needed to decode digital signals for analogue televisions, and government plans to subsidise these devices for up to five million households.
Responding to a report that the ANC has instructed Communications Minister Faith Muthambi to take the political party’s lekgotla decision to enforce set-top box controls to cabinet, the DA said it “welcomes” the development.
“The Democratic Alliance welcomes media reports that the ANC has opted for encryption for the subsidised set-top boxes (STBs) that will enable five million identified poor households to receive free-to-air digital television broadcasts,” said the DA Shadow Minister for Telecommunications and Postal Services, Marian Shinn, in a statement.
“The decision to encrypt STBs puts the process of digital migration back to where it was a year ago, before President Jacob Zuma split the former Department of Communications (DoC) in two, causing a turf war over the process between two cabinet ministers after the 2014 general election,” Shinn added.
Shinn explained that Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Siyabonga Cwele, was in a position in July 2014 to have a revised ‘Broadcasting Digital Migration’ policy approved by Cabinet.
But Shinn said this process “was stalled as Communications Minister, Faith Muthambi, insisted that BDM was her responsibility”.
“Late last year a legislative tangle was created as clauses of various acts were shuffled between the two ministries, giving executive authority over anything to do with broadcasting to the Minister of Communications,” said Shinn.
“One is left to speculate what vested interests were at play to cause the year-long delay in approving minor adjustments to the BDM policy. It caused incalculable financial costs to the broadcasting sector, the electronics manufacturers who have invested in anticipation of being included in the programme, and the internet-based sector that will expand once the broadcast spectrum (TV white space) that is hogged by analogue broadcasting is released,” she said.The DA, though, has taken issue with how the state-owned Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (Usaasa) issued invitations late last year to tender for the manufacture of the subsidised STBs.
The DA said this call for bids was “legally dubious”.“This is based on the grounds that the call for tender requested costings of digital terrestrial television STBs with and without controlled access, which contravenes the BDM policy of 2008 that stated STBs must all be encrypted,” said Shinn.
“We have also raised our concerns at the delay in drafting regulatory standards for STBs for Direct to the Home (DTH) broadcasts,” she said.More channels, freeing up spectrum
If successful, South Africa’s digital migration process is planned to open up several more television channels and frequencies for mobile networks to provide faster internet broadband.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has set June 15, 2015 as the deadline for the global switchover to digital television. Experts, though, have doubts that South Africa will meet this deadline.
Other African countries such as Namibia have already started making the switch.
And the ANC is intent on speeding up this process, according to its first lekgotla for 2015.
“Information Communication Technologies (ICT), particularly broadband, have the potential to propel our economy to higher levels of growth, opening opportunities for new industries and modernising the delivery of social and economic services,” said the ANC in a statement issued last week.
“Lekgotla has directed the finalisation of the digital migration process to support broadband roll out. Government must move with the necessary speed to meet the deadline of 15 June 2015,” said the ANC.
ANC spokespeople were unavailable for comment on its digital migration plans at the time of writing.
