Broadcast signal distributor, Sentech, says it does not predict any problems following the migration from analogue to digital in the Northern Cape.
Sentech CEO, Mlamli Booi says they’ve had a successful transition in both the Free State and Northern Cape and have not received any complaints.
“We’ve developed and established infrastructure for digital broadcasting and we’ve been in the journey of switching off analogue to digital. The network is stable. Sentech has done a great job to make sure that it is maintained, kept at the highest level of quality and at all times the signal is up and running. So, we have been making good progress having switch off analogue in the free state and now we are in the Northern Cape we will be moving to the North West and other provinces where we will be turning off analogue so that we can free up the spectrum that is so much required,” says Booi.
Government clarifies the switch from analogue to digital:
Where is South Africa’s digital migration?
In 2006, the South African government accepted the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) agreement that called for countries to migrate from analogue Television to Digital Television by June 2015.
The purpose of the mandate known as the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) process was to improve the quality of TV services and maximise the efficient use of the spectrum.
The South African government initially set the deadline to complete the migration process by 2011, however, this never happened as the programme suffered setback after setback during the technology negotiations process.
On March 18, 2015, South Africa started the process of migrating broadcasting signals from analogue to digital.
However, recently Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni indicated that the television broadcast digital migration process is set to meet the 31 March 2022 deadline that President Cyril Ramaphosa announced during his State of the Nation Address earlier this year.
To assist the masses, the government says it will run an Analogue Switch-off message that will scroll on analogue TVs with dates to ensure that the population is aware and migrates before the set dates to continue receiving television services.
Why a Digital Migration?
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