{"id":6841,"date":"2012-02-28T11:04:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T11:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=6841"},"modified":"2012-02-28T11:07:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-28T11:07:51","slug":"analogue-switch-off-672-days-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/6841\/analogue-switch-off-672-days-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"Analogue switch-off: 672 days and counting"},"content":{"rendered":"

With South Africa set to switch off analogue terrestrial broadcasts by the end of December 2013, state-run signal distributor, Sentech<\/a>, says it is \u2018on track\u2019 regarding the rollout timeline on the DVB-T standard.<\/p>\n

Following a long battle between the various digital terrestrial television (DTT) standards, the Department of Communications (DoC) announced in January 2011 that South Africa would adopt the DVB-T2 standard.<\/p>\n

In January 2012, Minister of Communications, Dina Pule<\/a>, said that Sentech was making significant progress in the rollout of the DVB-T2 transmitters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe anticipate that by March 2012 the digital signal will cover more than 60% of the population,\u201d the minister said. This adds to government\u2019s commitment to have 95% coverage by the end of 2013.<\/p>\n

Sentech Spokesperson, Nthabeleng Mokitimi, confirmed this date with BusinessTech: \u201cBy the end of March 2012, Sentech will be ready with the DVB-T2 network, covering 60% of the population.<\/p>\n

\u201cSentech is indeed on-track to ensure that affected broadcasters migrate from analogue to digital television within the government-set timelines,\u201d Mokitimi said.<\/p>\n

The digital migration has been beset by delays, however, with the target of November 2011 pushed back to April 2012 – and now to December 2013.<\/p>\n

The parastatal has been afforded a total of R643 million by the SA Treasury for the dual-illumination period and for digital broadcasting infrastructure. Dual-illumination is the period when both digital and analogue signals will be broadcast – until such time as the country is ready for digital signals.<\/p>\n

This funding pledge was announced last week by Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan<\/a>, as part of his annual budget for 2012, and included additional funding of R141 million for the purchase of 30 television- and 30 radio-transmitters.<\/p>\n

Digital migration would enable a clearer signal; space for more television channels; and it would free up spectrum for the telecommunications industry.<\/p>\n

Gordhan\u2019s budget review booklet also noted that a playout centre will be established, and technology would be provided for a digital library for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).<\/p>\n

The SABC will receive R138 million as part of a total allocation of R478.6 million. This is to ensure analogue programming content is available in digital format, the booklet said.<\/p>\n

In April last year, Sentech said that the government had allocated R279 million for the rollout of digital broadcasting infrastructure, and dual-illumination operations during 2011-2012. An additional R343 million would be allocated for the remainder of the medium-term expenditure framework period.<\/p>\n

Sentech earmarked capital expenditure of R993 million over the next three years for digital terrestrial television, with operating expenditure at R329 million over the same period.<\/p>\n

In its annual report – ended March 2011 – Sentech announced a R20 million decline in total revenue, to R826 million. The decrease was largely attributed to the decrease in the dual-illumination government grant income from R51 million to R36 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With South Africa set to switch off analogue terrestrial broadcasts by the end of December 2013, state-run signal distributor, Sentech, says it is ‘on track’ regarding the rollout timeline on the DVB-T standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1087,1648,1083,1444,1737,26,84,667,1646,1738],"class_list":["post-6841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-department-of-communications","tag-digital-terrestrial-television","tag-dina-pule","tag-doc","tag-dvb-t2","tag-headline","tag-pravin-gordhan","tag-sabc","tag-sentech","tag-south-african-broadcasting-corporation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6841"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6843,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841\/revisions\/6843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}