by Thinus Ferreira
Close to a quarter million poor South African TV households are still waiting for their subsidised digital terrestrial television (DTT) decoders to be installed South Africa's minister of communications and digital technologies, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, revealed at a media briefing on Thursday afternoon.
Eleven years behind schedule, South Africa's government is still trying to complete the country's long-overdue switch from analogue to digital terrestrial TV, a process known as digital migration.
While the South African government and the parastatal TV signal distributor Sentech have started to switch off analogue transmission signal towers in several provinces - something that has damaged the TV ratings of the SABC over the past year - eMedia's e.tv has refused to do so, taking the communications department to the Constitutional Court and demanding that the process be delayed until more free-to-air TV households have access to DTT instead of simply being cut off from public television in South Africa.
The outcome of the court case in which e.tv has been victorious over the department, has seen the analogue switch-off deadline of 30 June 2022 pushed out further to an undetermined date.
Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said that the new final date for households to register to receive a free DTT STB is now 30 September 2022, and hasn't declared a new final switch-off date.
On Thursday afternoon Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, at a DTT press briefing, said that 244 000 DTT installations still need to be done for indigent TV households earning less than R3 500 per month and who qualify for a free DTT set-top box (STB) decoder.
The 244 000 include TV households in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape who had their installations delayed due to adverse weather and flooding halting the process.
Between April and July this year there have been an average of 15 288 registrations from TV households applying for the government-subsidised STB, with the number of registrations declining.
"The total number of new registered households between April and July 2022 now stands at 61 155 and this translates to an average of 15 288 registrations per month - therefore, representing a decline in set-top-box applications and registrations," she said.
"The digital migration process is a national priority, and it must be completed without any further delay for the benefit of the country," Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said.
