Most South African TV viewers remain blissfully unaware of the pending switch-over - delayed for years now and the switch-on date still constantly postponed - from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting and its massive implications.
Digital television in South Africa will require viewers to pay an estimated R700 for a set-top box (STB) and in most cases another additional amount for a new outdoor antenna in order to continue to receive public TV channels from the SABC and e.tv. M-Net analogue viewers will also have to get new decoders.
South Africa's broadcasting regulator published yet another new set of revised DTT regulations on 10 July and which the industry only had until the end of July to comment on. Icasa is under extreme pressure to provide a final set of DTT regulations for South Africa's long-delayed DTT switch-over. Icasa intends to publish a final set of DTT regulations in September.
Although South Africa started first with the DTT process, the country has been passed by several African nations over the past few years, Namibia being the latest where a DTT service was introduced last month.
The South African government and the department of communications which is supposed to drive the process looks unlikely to make the latest announced deadline for switch-on of DTT in early October since no tenders for STBs have been granted and no information has been released around how subsidies for poorest households will work.
The department of communications has also not made publicly available the STB specifications decided upon in June.
There is also no public clarity regarding the contentious and controversial issues of "conditial access" as well as encryption. The South African government wants the potential power to cut off signals to STBs and wants South African broadcasters to make their public television signals encrypted through the STB to protect STB manufacturing in South Africa.
The SABC, e.tv and M-Net have all told me in mid-July that they don't have a specific commercial switch-on date for DTT since they're waiting on the government and the final regulations to be finalised.
Icasa tells me that there won't be any public hearing over this new set of draft DTT regulations because "this is the second round of public consultation on the draft DTT regulations, which in the first round involved both written and oral representations. Icasa has a discretion whether to hold public hearings as part of the public consultation process and has decided not to do so in the second round in order to speed up the finalisation of the regulations".
Icasa says the regulator "sees this as the final round of public consultation, unless someone makes a strong case for further consultation".
