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Muthambi drives digital TV awareness

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 20 Dec 2016
Department of Communications minister, Faith Muthambi, has embarked on door-to-door visits to educate communities about digital migration.
Department of Communications minister, Faith Muthambi, has embarked on door-to-door visits to educate communities about digital migration.

Communications minister Faith Muthambi will visit three provinces as part of her department's public awareness campaign to inform communities about migration from analogue broadcasting to digital, a statement revealed.

The awareness campaign follows on the department's first progressive step in the digital migration project, which saw households in the Square Kilometre Array area in the Northern Cape switch to digital terrestrial television in October.

Today, Muthambi will engage residents of ward 17 under the Umfolozi Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal about the significance of digital migration and its benefits to South Africans, said the statement.

The event will take place at the Donda Sports Field, where residents are set to receive government subsidised set-top box decoders (STBs), it noted.

Muthambi is expected to also interact with traditional leaders in the area and seek their support in encouraging their respective communities to register for the STBs.

"Traditional leaders continue to play a key role in our society ...they are instrumental in disseminating information critical to the uplifting of the lives of their communities.

"In all provinces where we have enlisted the support of traditional leaders to drive public awareness of digital migration, we have seen an increase in the uptake of decoders," she said.

Muthambi's department revealed that the total projected qualifying households with functional TVs in KwaZulu-Natal are 895 738, and a total of 50 475 STB registrations were processed up to 7 December 2016.

Later this week, the minister will take the digital migration awareness campaign to Thabo Mofutsanyane Municipality in the Free State, and to Mpumalanga on 29 December.

Registrations for STB decoders will open in the North West, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Gauteng at a later stage, according to the department.

Government plans to subsidise five million indigent TV-owning households across the country with free STBs.

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