Yay! Digital migration promises a much-needed win to lift the gloom
• A decade late, but we will soon be able to tune in to a digital TV spectrum that’s assuming we have power —
Iwas pleased to read the latest business confidence report from the SA Chamber of Commerce & Industry showing a dip in sentiment in August. Obviously, a dip in business confidence is a bad thing, but it was just good to feel less alone in my low mood. It has been a long hard pandemic (is there any other kind?), and I’m Zoomed out and gloomy.
Between our world-leading unemployment numbers (we’re the champions!), the Facebook Files and, well, everything else, I was feeling a little hopeless. And then there were the body blows of the Digital Vibes report from the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in late September.
The SIU’s report (on the awarding of the National Health Insurance media campaign and subsequent Covid-19 communications to Digital Vibes) claims that “irregular expenditure amounting to approximately R150m and fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to approximately between R72m and R80m was incurred by the [national department of health]”. That’s just more than R200m, or one month’s worth of illegal social grants skimmed from the SA Social Security Agency by government employees.
I’m not going to lie, this one really hurt, since Zweli Mkhize gave all the signs and impressions of being an upstanding public servant.
I was so invested that maybe I ignored the red flags. It’s hard not to be a hope junkie when it comes to SA.
But at least the revelations have led to some action, including suspensions, preservation orders attempting to claw back some of the cash, and recommended criminal prosecution, which just might happen if the justice department can get its systems up and running again.
So there’s optimism to be found in any situation. You know the saying: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”? Thanks to the timely return of loadshedding, the stars are much easier to see without all that pesky ambient electric light.
And soon, hopefully, we will all be able to tune in to a digital television spectrum, assuming we have power, of course.
Last week, communications & digital technologies minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced the appointment of a project steering committee, whose purpose is to see the migration from analogue to digital broadcast finally come to fruition.
We’re only a decade behind the original goal of 2011, which was moved out to 2012, 2015 and March 2021, and other dates, as well. At least we’re only six years tardy of the International Telecommunications Union deadline.
Fear not, however, since we now have new milestones to target, which will surely solve all the problems with the migration rollout plan. Additionally, since the provinceby-province plan was not running to schedule the decision was made to do all the provinces at once, which can only ease the burden, right?
The committee will be chaired by the minister and managed by Sentech COO Tebogo Leshope. The steering committee has promised to give monthly updates to the cabinet as 2022 approaches. Earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa targeted March 2022 as the deadline, but the minister and committee are now aiming at January.
Ntshavheni said in a statement: “It has never been that we don’t have the capacity to migrate; it has been other things that have slowed our migration in terms of the technical skills to see us through the migration.”
Her rollout plan carried details on how 1-million households (earning less than R3,500 a month) had registered to get a digital set-top box
— about a quarter of the estimated number of qualifying households. Fewer than 600,000 have been migrated by the project, apparently, while 10.5-million (of 14-million households with television sets) took matters into their own hands by acquiring private satellite set-top boxes.
The efforts to date mean the 84 MultiChoice analogue sites (100%), 37% of the SABC sites and 4% of the e.tv analogue transmission sites, are off. Someone with a negative outlook might suggest that a 100% hit rate on the one category that is built on satellite connections isn’t really a win the government can count for itself, but that’s just “stinking thinking”, ja?
At least everyone is on board with the new plan. Well, except eMedia, which is the parent company of e.tv and OpenView. It actually went to court a month ago to try to stop the declaration of the 2022 deadline.
Khalik Sherrif, the eMedia CEO. told TechCentral last week “it absolutely cannot be done”. According to him, “the shortest possible time in which the project can be completed without causing serious harm to the broadcasting sector is 15 months”, TechCentral reported. “Anything less, he said, would harm e.tv and other broadcasters and flout provisions of the constitution dealing with the broadcasting sector.” eMedia has also added its name to Telkom’s related legal case trying to halt the spectrum auction by communications regulator Icasa.
All sarcasm aside, I am rooting for the rollout. It would be such a joy to be proved wrong, such a win for a public infrastructure project to come to fruition, and one people actually want. We really need a win, and there’s no imminent Rugby World Cup or the like to bolster our flagging morale. I’ll take one delivered public project if it is going, no matter how late.
AT LEAST EVERYONE IS ON BOARD WITH THE NEW PLAN. WELL, EXCEPT EMEDIA, THE PARENT COMPANY OF E.TV AND OPENVIEW