Switch-on of digital television, which was scheduled for next month, has been postponed pending the outcome of a legal wrangle over set-top box controls.
The court case, between free-to-air broadcaster etv and the Department of Communications, over a decision that Sentech would handle conditional access on decoders, has been heard, but a decision is yet to be handed down.
As a result, the department's hands are tied and it cannot flick the switch, or award a set-top box tender, until the ruling is handed down.
SA is moving from analogue broadcasting to digital television, and government has vowed to wrap up the process by the middle of 2015, at the latest. Migrating to digital television will free up spectrum - the so-called digital dividend.
This white space can be used to speed up broadband, expanding penetration into SA's rural areas, which have historically been overlooked, while metropolitans reaped the benefits of wireless broadband.
However, if turn-off is pushed past the mid-2015 deadline, SA's potential to create 1.5 million new jobs, and add another R16 billion to the economy, will be trimmed.
Hitting pause
Department spokesperson Siya Qoza says government's hands are tied until the court case is resolved. He adds that the set-top box tender, to make subsidised decoders, which should have been awarded last month, is also on hold pending a ruling.
The state has set aside about R2.45 billion to subsidise as much as 70% of decoders for around five million houses. The boxes are expected to cost about R400 each, with as many as 36 firms bidding to make the decoders.
ITWeb understands that decoders could be delivered a month after the tender is awarded. However, there will only be limited quantities and only companies currently making decoders will be able to deliver initially.
However, etv says its court bid is not the reason digital television is being delayed. COO Bronwyn Keene-Young says migration is being delayed due to a lack of regulatory certainty with no finalised regulations, no confirmed Sentech tariffs for broadcasters, and no strong communications campaign around digital television.
Keene-Young says the broadcaster supports migration, but is within its rights to advocate for a strong and stable platform to ensure a fair and efficient digital broadcasting environment.
Bolstering the economy
Peter Lyons, director of spectrum policy for Africa and Middle East, at the GSM Association (GSMA), says releasing spectrum in the digital dividend, the high-demand 2.6GHz band, and re-farming 1 800MHz by 2015 will add an additional 1.5 million jobs and R16 billion in gross domestic product (GDP).
SA currently has an unemployment rate of 25.5%, according to the latest figures released by Statistics SA. A five-year delay, pushing back spectrum release to 2020, would mean that the 2015 to 2020 benefits would not be realised, notes Lyons.
Lyons says, at the current rate of digital migration, the GSMA expects a "handful" of African countries to meet the June 2015 deadline for analogue switch-off, including SA, Kenya, Ghana, and Tanzania.
Some European countries have already moved off analogue, Lyons notes. "A strong, coordinated effort by policy-makers, legislators, and the telecommunications industry to release spectrum for mobile broadband will translate into billions of dollars of additional GDP and millions of new jobs in sub-Saharan Africa."
One of the major bottlenecks that need to be addressed in sub-Saharan Africa is establishing national legislation and regulatory frameworks for migration and allocating the digital dividend, explains Lyons.
Wishful thinking
However, according to the department, the digital dividend is not as big as mobile operators may have hoped, and cellular companies may not get as much space as they want in the 800MHz range.
The department has indicated that, although it will sort out allocations in high-demand 2.6GHz soon, space in 800MHz will have to wait until SA has moved to digital television.
Technical advisor Roy Kruger has said that while the ITU will release bandwidth in the digital dividend space, this is only likely to be around 70MHz in size. In SA, the amount of space that is freed up will depend on the number of channels that go on air, Kruger noted.
While the digital dividend should see telecoms companies gain space in the 800MHz range, broadcasters also want access to this range, said Kruger. He added this issue has not been decided and when it is sorted out, free space is unlikely to be allocated in SA until around 2016.
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