Public-private partnerships key in achieving successful digital migration

Jun 25, 2015

Digital migration comes with costs on the side of television broadcasters and content consumers (viewers).


By David Ssempijja in Beijing

As the world moves to harness the mandatory transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting (digital migration), there is a need to undertake Public-Private partnerships to enable the process to achieve considerable success in terms of quality and affordability especially in developing countries.

Digital migration comes with costs on the side of television broadcasters and content consumers (viewers) because it requires those with analogue television sets to buy decoders or Set Top Boxes (STBs) used to convert analogue receivers into digital to enable them access images; however, tapping into the benefits of this technology requires the sharing of costs by government and the private sector.

In 2006, the International Telecommunications Union set June 17th 2015 as the global deadline for all countries to have switched off analogue, the switch off process has taken course in the developed countries as well as some Africa countries. Digital broadcasting is meant to offer better quality images and sound as well more channels per frequency (one frequency can carry up to 20 channels as opposed to analogue’s one-channel-one frequency scenario.

Accordingly, StarTimes Group convened the 5th African Digital TV Development Seminar in Beijing last week to coincide with the eve of the analogue switch off deadline and bring together television broadcasting stakeholders across Africa to share national experiences and plan the future of digital broadcasting for the good of the masses.

In his opening presentation under the theme; embracing digital TV to promote social development, the StarTimes Group president Pang Xinxing pointed out that costs related to digital migration have to be as low as possible to enable poor households not to miss out on the benefits.

“We are strengthening our foot print in Africa’s television broadcasting industry and public must rest assured that they will have the digital dividends they deserve, but doing this successfully will require means of making technology affordable without compromising quality; we need to forge public-private partnerships where our role as service providers would be to invent into less costly innovations as governments consider relaxing taxation regimes and offering subsidies to the process,” he said.
 

true
Participants at the 5th African Digital TV Development Seminar in Beijing last week


Xinxing revealed that as the new broadcasting technology proceeds, his company is moving to seek African governments’ support to form joint ventures and boost investments in building cost effective broadcasting technologies using funds from StarTimes and support in form of concessional loans.

“For example the joint ventures we plan will amount to $192m per country, countries deserve cheap services, we plan that once we partner with governments, the STBs will go for only $10 after subsidy which will be coupled with providing poor families with program packages like of more than 30 channels including Free To Air at $2 to $3 monthly fees,” he told delegates.

Delegates shared experiences, with those that already switched off analogue trying to show the correct line to countries that are just planning to take the same trend


Lessons Uganda must draw from neighboring Kenya


The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has started a phased switch off of analogue starting with Kampala and areas within a radius of 60 kilometres, but this undertaking takes course amidst huge public awareness gaps; much as the UCC executive director Eng. Godfrey Mutabazi insists the body has carried out enough sensitization.

The director Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) Francis Wangusi says that his body’s strategic digital migration public awareness campaign has been running for three years focusing on a comprehensive elucidation of what the technology is all about.

“We have done much to license as many STB distributors and vendors as possible to the current number of 65, CAK always publishes the approved and licensed players in this market; in different languages, we tell public about how to  identify approved players in this area, many nationals are now aware of the techniques of identifying genuine from fake STBs, we encourage them to insist of warranty and keep official receipts as CAK also continues to let the public know about the existence of free to air STBs as well as widening the  regular presence of our enforcement team in the field,” he said. 

Public awareness is key in running a successful migration process for it becomes easy for public to harness what they fully understand.
 

true
Vision Group’s David Ssemugga and other engineers switch all Vision group TVs from analogue to digital migration at Kololo in Kampala


On contrary, UCC’s awareness has largely been tagged to informing people about the existence of free to air decoders, but people aren’t even aware of the locations of those dealers and what they must have to prove their legal status; however, some local private companies are also engaged in awareness; virtually, most Ugandans are oblivious of the new broadcasting trend much as migration has started taking course.

On the front of awareness, the chairman Uganda Pay Television Subscribers Association Lwasa Omar also faults UCC for failing to carry out enough awareness, he said the regulator failed to reach the masses through outreach avenues like road show campaigns but concentrated on adverts on Tvs more aired in English, the corporate way of sensitizing people is not impactful. 

Wangusi observes that countries must create competition among signal distributers to ensure quality services and higher charges that arise out of monopoly. CAK first had one distributer the America based Signet, but when they licensed Pan-African Network Group in addition, there was some reasonable degree of service delivery improvement.

Uganda licensed Signet as a signal distributor and UBC as generator for content, reversing the earlier policy mandate that had given UBC a signal distributor monopoly status.


Uganda migrates in mixture high costs of doing business


Players are still dissatisfied with the cost of doing business which they observe is hindering pay TV penetration as well as the transition into digital broadcasting, much of the costs are emanating from taxes.

The head of Azam TV Uganda office Simon Arineitwe said recently that the taxes include 25% import duty on dishes, 6% withholding tax and 18%Value Added Tax.

This is in addition to the 0.5%  Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) levy and the railway contribution levy, which they consider as deterrent for more people to afford pay-tv services since they (taxes) are all passed on to the final consumer in form of high prices.

Although government waived the 25% import duty on decoders, he said the waiver should at least have cut across all equipment used in pay-tv to make services affordable and facilitate digital migration.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});