Digital migration will widen gap between information haves and have-nots

By Michael Mubangizi

The Uganda Communications Commission has started enforcing the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) set June 17, 2015 deadline of transiting from analogue to digital broadcasting in a phased manner starting with Kampala and areas 60km outside Kampala.

The change couldn’t be effected at once because of technical glitches like signal coverage, which is still limited to Kampala.

Signet Ltd, the company tasked with signal distribution needs at least sh26b to fix signal in other parts of the country. The supply and purchase of decoders is also low with only 10,000 decoders sold compared to 3.5 Ugandans who own television sets.

In that state of unpreparedness, one wonders why the Government had to hurry in switching off people before the necessary infrastructure are put in place.

The Government hasn’t yet instituted many of the things that the 2011 Digital Migration Policy for TV Broadcasting in Uganda requires it to do. For instance, in order to foster local content development, which is one of the benefits of digital migration, the policy tasks the Government to establish a body entrusted with the responsibility of promoting diverse content development by providing financial and other support to the local content development industry.

In a country where poverty reigns, this transition will be financially painful to most people, especially because of the additional digital TV receivers needed for one to watch TV. While poverty in Uganda reduced from 56.4% to 24.5% between 1992/3 and 2009/10, many of those who have escaped absolute poverty remains highly vulnerable with official government reports like the June 2012 Poverty Status report classifying 43% of Ugandans as non poor but insecure.

This will make TVs, which remain a preserve of a few people out of reach thanks to limited electricity coverage and prohibitive costs and thus widen the gap between information haves and have-nots.

According to the 2011 African media barometer opinion poll, 15% of Ugandans got news from television on a daily basis. However, that figure jumped to 64 in Kampala and 47% in all urban centres.

Similarly, the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Household Survey, says 25.5% Ugandans in urban areas own television sets compared to 2.6% in rural areas. Ipsos Synovate findings show there are 3.5 million TV users in the country of 34.8 million people.

In such a context of many people unable to afford television sets, adding another layer of digital TV receivers required to watch TV tantamount to asking them to buy flat screen televisions akin to what Marie Antoinatte told the French who couldn’t afford basic bread to eat cakes!

Such people should be helped to afford televisions and not to blur their dreams of owning one.

Uganda is party to several international, continental and regional legal instruments guaranteeing freedom of expression in all its diversity. In many ways, Uganda’s Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, including freedom of the media. Article 29 (1) (a) guarantees the right to free expression, which includes the freedom of the media while article 41 (1) gives every citizen the right of access to information in the possession of the state.

Additionally, the Constitution’s Objective II.1 states “the State shall be based on democratic principles which empower and encourage the active participation of all citizens at all levels in their own governance”.

From that provision, it is evident that the framers of our constitution acknowledge that information is critical to the full enjoyment and exercise of full rights of citizenship. By limiting TV access to few people, digital migration obliterates that necessity.

The writer is a media and communications specialist