South Africa’s transition from analogue broadcasting to digital terrestrial television (DTT) was likely to move full steam ahead as government draws the middle ground in what had turned out to be a debilitating, heated debate between stakeholders that had ground the project to a halt.

Cabinet’s decision to opt for the nonmandatory use of a control system in the set-top boxes (STBs) not subsidised by government was welcomed by industry as it meant some movement toward the country’s digital broadcasting ambitions.

“STB manufacturers have been preparing and waiting for years for digital migration to be commercially launched in South Africa and can respond quickly once this issue is resolved and orders are placed,” said South African Communications Forum (SACF) executive director Loren Braithwaite-Kabosha.

Frost & Sullivan information and communication technologies analyst Joanita Roos said this decision was a big step forward and created momentum for a project that was five years behind schedule.

The SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition acting coordinator Sekoetlane Phamodi believed the move was a “valiant compromise”, while the SACF supported the Department of Communication’s (DoC’s) approach and commended its attempt to balance the various interests and concerns.

As most of the broadcasters were opposed to a control system, making its use mandatory could have attracted more challenging legal action from broadcasters and entrepreneurs, Communications Minister Yunus Carrim said.

However, dropping the system altogether would mean a 6- to 12-month amendment of the decoder’s SANS 862:2012 standards and subsequent legal action from manufacturers that had invested in control system certification and STB designs, based on the specifications in the standards.

Any more legal action would further delay the migration process.

“We were threatened with legal action from several parties to the dispute, and we had to tread a careful path. The policy we shaped sought to address the key concerns of all the parties to reduce the prospects of this,” Carrim said.

Broadcasters not wanting to make use of the control system would be “unaffected by the existence of the control system” in the STBs or by the use of the system by other broadcasters, he stressed.

Broadcaster e.tv believed that giving free-to-air broadcasters the option of using the control system was an advantage that allowed broadcasters, such as e.tv, to encrypt their signal and protect their content, without compelling all broadcasters to do so.

However, Carrim pointed out that the actual technical definition - including the type and nature; the supplier, vendor and operator of the control system; and the operations of the system - would fall to the free-to-air broadcasters opting to use the control system to decide, which could only be done once the final amendments to the Digital Migration Policy were published.

“All free-to-air broadcasters who choose to use the STB control system will be required to carry the costs of setting up and maintaining the system. These costs are not significant. Manufacturers will need to pay a one-off royalty of about R20 per STB produced to the supplier of the control system,” e.tv group head of corporate affairs Vasili Vass told Engineering News Online.