SA's migration from analogue to digital broadcasting is heading for a budgetary and time crunch, as the November 2011 deadline draws nearer. This is due to an apparent mismatch between Cabinet approval and Independent Communication Authority of SA (ICASA) regulations.
Yesterday, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications heard from the Department of Communications (DOC) that budget allocations for the dual-illumination period are scheduled to end in November next year, as determined by Cabinet. This is despite the regulations pushing out the end date indefinitely.
“It seems that we may end up with no funding for the extended dual-illumination period, after the November 2011 analogue switch-off, and this would mean a sharp drop in the numbers of people able to watch free-to-air TV,” an industry observer, who was monitoring the proceedings, told ITWeb.
Democratic Alliance MP Niekie van den Berg told ITWeb: “The delays and bungling of the digital migration means it will be the poor who lose out.”
National signal distributor Sentech will receive R270.9 million in the coming financial year and R279 million in 2011/12 for digitisation. In the year after that, it will receive R167 million.
SA is in a dual-illumination period that began in November 2008. About 66% of the country is supposed to have been covered by the new digital signal transmitters. However, so far, only a third is covered.
The delay in extending coverage has been attributed to the fact that ICASA must first wrap up the regulations and frequency spectrum plan; something it has now done.
In February, ICASA published its finalised digital migration regulations, which saw the switchover date being pushed out. Alongside the regulations, it published a “reasons document”, indicating the industry is not ready for the switchover.
Communications committee chairman Ismail Vadi asked DOC director-general Mamodupi Mohlala why this was the case.
Mohlala replied that she could not understand why ICASA had decided on its own process when Cabinet had approved the three-year switchover period in 2007.
ICASA chairman Paris Mashile confirmed to the committee that the regulations were final.
Funding of various state-owned enterprises, that fall within the DOC's portfolio, has been a matter of contention for some time. National Treasury has repeatedly rejected various attempts to allow Sentech to raise its own capital from other sources apart from government.
During her presentation to Parliament, Mohlala said one of the DOC's main priorities was to allow for entities such as Sentech and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to obtain funding.
Mohlala described the R1 billion bailout of the SABC last year as “a painful exercise” and stated government funding of these entities was not a continuing option.
She also said Cabinet was scheduled today to receive the DOC's policy on radio spectrum allocation for approval.
The policy for setting the standards for set-top boxes, the units that are needed to convert digital TV signals for viewing on an analogue set, would only be finalised in May.
“We are sorting out problems with the return path on the STBs so that people are able to access e-government services,” Mohlala told the committee.
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Sentech loses out
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