Broadcast Digital Migration Policy in South Africa

Abstract

All countries in the world, are compelled to migrate their analogue terrestrial television systems to digital by the year 2015 as stipulated by the International Telecommunications Union. The old analogue transmission signals will be eventually switched off and so countries need to upgrade their television systems so that they can receive digital signals. This has necessitated government intervention in the form of policies or strategies to manage this transition process from analogue to digital. This chapter looks at the transition from analogue to digital terrestrial television migration in South Africa. It considers South Africa’s Digital Migration Policy as a framework meant to advance the introduction of digital terrestrial television. Since the process is still in motion and we are looking at a start of a transition period towards the eventual cut-off date of analogue signals in 2015, there are therefore no definite conclusions about whether the South African case can be considered entirely successful. The effort of this chapter is merely to gauge the policy effort and rollout activities made thus far towards digital migration, highlighting potential drawbacks.