South Africa reaffirms commitment to DVB for DTT

Statement by Minister of Communications Mr R L. Padayachie on progress made with regards to the Digital Migration process

South Africa’s Minister of Communications today formally announced developments that reflect several milestones reached thus far regarding the Broadcasting Digital Migration process.

The process has gone through several phases since South Africa took the decision to migrate from analogue to digital television.

The Geneva 2006 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) for Countries within ITU Region 1, including Africa, Europe and the Middle East established a framework to proceed with digital migration.

The Conference adopted a digital television broadcasting plan, otherwise known as the GENEVA 06 PLAN.

The plan, inter alia, addressed the migration of the existing Television services in the Very High Frequency and Ultra High Frequency bands to digital by June 2015.

RRC-06 also adopted the Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial or DVB-T, as the standard for Region 1. All radio frequency plans for this region were as a result coordinated around the parameters suitable to this particular standard.

All African countries are signatories to the Geneva 06 agreement and are legally bound by its requirements.

Only some countries in West Africa placed a footnote to complete the migration of the VHF band by 2020.

More:
• Government confirms new digital TV standard (Business Day)
• South Africa Confirms DVB-T2 Adoption