Malawi looking for help to develop Digital TV Migration Technical Plan

Request for proposals (RFP) for the dev. of national digital tv migration technical plan consultancy

Malawi’s Ministry of Information and Civic Education has funds in its Development Budget under the Digital Migration Project and intends to utilize part of the proceeds for the cost of engaging an experienced consulting firm to develop a detailed National Digital TV Migration Technical Plan. An RFP has been issued by the Malawi Office of the Director of Public Procurement.

The primary objective and scope of work are:

• To design appropriate Digital Television Transmission (DTT) network and structures for successful migration from analogue to digital television broadcasting for Malawi.
• Situation analysis of the existing infrastructure for digital migration, existing institutional framework and current network distribution;
• Design and costing of the digital broadcasting system taking into account the national content contribution network, Multiplexing including conditional access options, distribution and the transmission system for national coverage;
• Production of the digital TV roll out plan and migration strategies for the country for various services and to include radio stations in the multiplex;
• Review end user reception equipment; pricing and support to ensure universal access;
• Review the satellite distribution network for viability and upgrading requirements with due consideration to the translation between the satellite and terrestrial services for use for both analogue and digital distribution of broadcasts to re-broadcast terrestrial sites as well as for direct to home (DTH) services with recommendations for the appropriate receiver equipment.
• Review cover options and recommendations for the DVB-T2 Digital Television national infrastructure and services with solutions for the programming content contributions from across the country, the multiplexing, distribution and the national transmission requirements with due consideration to backup and redundancy systems for reliability.

Proposals will be opened on 25th April, 2011, at 10:15 hours (10:15 a.m. local time).

More: RFP