South Africa’s long-delayed transition from analogue broadcasting to digital terrestrial television (TV) under the broadcasting digital migration (BDM) programme has been accelerated, with an ambition of concluding the analogue switch off (ASO) across all nine province by the end of January 2022.

Following a mandate by President Cyril Ramaphosa, during his 2021 State of the Nation Address, to conclude the programme by March 2022, Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the revised integrated ASO Implementation Plan was approved by Cabinet last week.

The new plan, which takes a collaborative approach towards fast-tracking the finalisation of the migration of the entire country from analogue to digital platforms, moves the implementation of the programme from a staggered provincial approach towards a consolidated national approach, where set-top boxes (STB) installations and ASO will happen simultaneously in all nine provinces of South Africa.

The ASO in the Free State, with one site left to be switched off, will be completed by the end of October, the Northern Cape, with 11 remaining sites, by mid- to the end of November and North West, with 15 remaining sites, by the first week of December.

In Mpumalanga and Limpopo, the ASO will be concluded by the end of December, while the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng will switch off by the end of January.

“To ensure that this plan is executed, I have established a project steering committee which is constituted by CEOs and technology executives of all affected and participating stakeholders. I have also appointed a project manager to oversee the digital migration and ASO process,” Ntshavheni said.

Chaired by Ntshavheni, the steering committee meets on a fortnightly basis, reports to Cabinet on a monthly basis and updates the public about the progress at least once a month.

South Africa, as a Region 1 member of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), missed the migration deadline of June 2015.

“As country, we initially aimed to complete the migration process in 2011 but the programme suffered serious setbacks during the technology negotiation processes. At this point, we remained with the ITU set date for Region 1 of June 2015, however the country also missed this date and furthermore did not seek exemption at the 2015 World Radiocommunications Conference, and thus South Africa did not qualify for another extension after missing the June 2015 migration deadline,” she said during a briefing.

However, she assured that substantial progress had been made in migrating some parts of the country from analogue to digital platforms.

Since the inception of the BDM programme, 556 954 of the current total of 1.18-million registered beneficiary households, which are households earning a salary of less than R3 500 that government committed to assisting with installation of STBs to ensure universal migration, have been migrated.

“The process of registering beneficiary households to be supported started in 2015 and to date 1.18-million qualifying households have been registered out of the estimated 3.75-million qualifying households,” Ntshavheni commented.

Further, Cabinet approved the adoption of a managed integrated model that actively involves all broadcast media players contributing to ramping up the STB installation capacity through the use of their boxes to ensure rapid reach.

Almost 10.5-million TV-owning households, out of just over 14-million, have self-migrated through private satellite boxes, including DSTV with 7.8-million households, OpenViewHD with 2.3-million households and StarSat with 450 000.

To date, Sentech has been able to switch off all 84 Multichoice analogue transmission sites, 105 out of 288 SABC analogue transmission sites and four of the 95 eTV analogue transmission sites.

“Given the low numbers of registered beneficiary households, Cabinet approved a last call for registration with a cut-off date of October 31, 2021,” she added.

The qualifying households who register on or before October 31 will be connected before the ASO, while households registering after the cut-off date will only be connected within three to six months after the ASO.

“We call upon all eligible households to register at the nearest post office on or before October 31 to receive government assistance for your STB installation. We are also finalising a registration application and the details will be announced in the near future,” Ntshavheni concluded.