SA will complete its delayed digital migration process by March 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday. If it happens by then, it will be almost two decades after the government’s first plans to leave analogue behind.
SA started planning for digital migration in 2004 and had set itself an initial deadline of 2011. The deadline was eventually moved to 2021, and now the government has pushed it back by another year.
Digital migration is crucial for freeing up more broadband spectrum — the radio waves by which information is transmitted — with the aim of boosting connectivity, potentially driving down the cost to communicate.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), explains that digital compression technology allows for several television programme channels to be carried within the same bandwidth that is used by one analogue television channel. Digital delivers an increasing number of quality television programmes using the same amount of spectrum as an analogue channel, and doing so more efficiently.
The high cost of communicating in SA has largely been blamed on a lack of competition and the “spectrum crunch”.
In his state of the nation address on Thursday, Ramaphosa said the completion of digital migration is vital to SA’s ability to effectively harness the enormous opportunities presented by technological change.
“After many delays, we will begin the phased switch-off of our analogue TV transmitters from next month [March],” Ramaphosa said. It is expected that this process, which will be done province by province, will be completed by the end of March 2022, he said.
The country already lags much of Africa on digital migration and missed the 2015 ITU deadline to switch its signal to digital. This means the union no longer protects SA’s analogue signal and people living in border areas could experience signal interruptions.
The migration process has been weighed down by many issues, not least the political instability as communications ministers were changed several times during former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure.
The government has been dragging its feet in freeing up and licensing more frequencies, amid the political squabbles and bureaucratic red tape. Spectrum has not been allocated in SA for close to a decade.
Ramaphosa said the process for the licensing of high-demand spectrum is at an advanced stage. “We hope that the ongoing litigation on the licensing matter will provide legal certainty and will not unduly delay the spectrum auction process,” he said.
Telecoms regulator the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) plans to auction R8bn worth of broadband spectrum by the end of March. However, a legal battle over the spectrum auction process means the deadline is unlikely to be met. MTN, SA’s second-largest mobile operator, lodged a case with the high court in January, seeking to change how the auction will be conducted saying the flawed process will impede its ability to compete in 5G services.
At the heart of the case is that Icasa has chosen to preclude the country’s two largest operators — MTN and Vodacom — from certain “opt-in” auction rounds in which the 3,500MHz spectrum band will be on offer. This band is necessary for 5G usage. MTN fears that rivals such as Telkom, Cell C, Liquid Telecom and Rain could take up much of this 5G spectrum, leaving very little or nothing for MTN and Vodacom.
That would make it almost impossible for MTN to compete in a market where 5G has started to take off. With Mudiwa Gavaza
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