Another DOC day, another DOC delay. Digital migration, the process by which frequency-hungry analogue television signals will be switched over to more efficient digital transmissions, has been delayed until at least 2013. During a public discussion (“tweetup”) arranged by Media Matters ZA and the Daily Maverick, I offered to put money on that deadline being missed too.
We'll pay for all this overpriced, protected, state-dictated luxury, because they're necessities.
Ivo Vegter, ITWeb contributor
The furious discussions among bureaucrats and the industry about technical specifications, standards and other such arcane subjects hide a lot of what it's really about.
As it stands, South Africa will use the DVB-T2 standard, which by all accounts appears to be a good choice. Admittedly, this was also the case for Betamax, which seemed a better technical choice than VHS, although nobody had thought to make them long enough for feature films until the battle was already over. Let's hope the bureaucrat's choice doesn't end up to be the set-top box equivalent of Video-2000.
Brazil and Japan would like that, because they've got loads invested in a rival standard. They've been trying to swindle some economies of scale out of potential suckers like South Africa. This merely caused a long delay in the finalisation of our own standard, while we contemplated the offers of bribes from those standards rivals. The delay was long enough that we switched from version one of the DVB-T standard to version two, so makers of set-top boxes remain as unprepared as ever.
Set-top boxes are the devices that, much like DStv decoders, convert the digital signal into a visible picture with sound. All televisions will need one, or have such a box built-in.
Of course, this need spurred another round of government's state-capitalist central planning. Apparently, we are “loath” to depend on foreign manufacturers for important electronic devices like set-top boxes. You see, we don't care if those evil foreigners withdraw our supplies of mobile phones, microwave ovens, computers or alarm clocks, but we'll be as good as defeated and marched off into slavery if they ever manage to put the squeeze on our digital TV gadgets.
So we're establishing a protected domestic industry. A few companies will get exclusive licences to build devices according to the government's specifications, at a price rather higher than the Chinese can offer. And instead of rival companies competing to work out the details - like whether these boxes need to be capable of two-way communication for interactive television, or be controlled by broadcasters so non-payers of TV licences can be switched off remotely - all these things need to be worked out in advance by government. Of course, the bureaucrats do this with their trademark omniscience. Not for government officials to subject themselves to the humbling benefit of discovering what real consumers want by subjecting their best guesses to the market to see if they'll sell.
We'll pay for all this overpriced, protected, state-dictated luxury, because they're necessities. In fact, the poor will get subsidies to help them pay for these set-top boxes. This is where it gets really farcical.
There's a tax classification called “luxury items” on devices like dishwashers, fridges, cellular phones and televisions. This means we pay more for them, because, you know, a fridge is not really something that poor people need to keep their hard-earned food from killing their babies.
The way it's written, set-top boxes like decoders are “reception apparatus”, so they qualify. This has been tested in court, when MultiChoice failed to get the luxury tax on satellite television decoders set aside. And this means that digital terrestrial television decoders will also be taxed as luxuries. (Unless, of course, they get an entirely unjustified and unfair special exemption.) Now, the poor will get subsidies to buy these luxuries, because... well, it's a little confusing. But in essence, the government is round-tripping a whole lot of money, which will come from taxpayers, go to the treasury, then be spent on the poor who can't live without the government broadcaster, and go right back to the taxman.
The only people who will be smiling, as usual, are the lucky licensees who get to build set-top boxes for their patrons in government. One way or another, they'll get their money, and none of them will need to worry about competition from more efficient manufacturers, because those will just be declared illegal or “grey” imports.
So next time you see a company complaining about the delays in digital migration, know this. They're not complaining for the same reason you and I might complain. Some of us might like clearer pictures, or we'd like to see all that wasted frequency spectrum cleared out and used for something better than the SABC. All the set-top box makers want, however, is to be able to budget for the massive windfall in state-protected business that's coming their way.
Another DOC day, another DOC delay. Once again, the government is tying itself into ever more farcical knots to work out how to get more pigs at the trough.
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