Earlier this year the South African government adjusted and has now set the end of 2013 by which it wants to complete South Africa's transition from analogue broadcasting to digital television broadcasting, a process known as digital migration. This long-delayed switch-over will affect all of South Africa's estimated 29,3 million TV households.
Chris Oberholzer, the head of strategy and development at the South African satellite broadcaster MultiChoice today called South Africa's cut-off date ''aggressive'' and ''far stretched''. He was speaking today at the AfricaCast 2011 TV summit that kicked off today in Cape Town as part of the 14th AfricaCom conference.
He referenced in detail a case study of DTT in France, a European nation with a well-developed television broadcasting architecture, infrastructure and consumer TV market. Chris Oberholzer illustrated how difficult and intricate it was for France to make the switch to digital television, the surprising problems encountered, and how the digital migration process took even France much, much longer.
''South Africa is being very aggressive about our digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration,'' he told delegates from across Africa. ''We [South Africa] believe that we can switch of analogue broadcasts by 2013. That belief is rather far stretched and a bridge too far.''
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