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How Africa Utilises Digital

Terrestrial Television

Annemarie Meijer

Commonwealth Digital

Broadcasting

Switchover Forum 17-19 February 2015, Johannesburg, South Africa

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A Quick Word on the Analog Switch Off

• Analog Switch Off (ASO) for

UHF + VHF per 17 June 2015

• For VHF per 17 June 2020

Analogue TV frequency bands :

• UHF Bands IV & V: 470-862 MHz

• VHF Band III: 174-230 MHz

Source: Cristian Gomez - ITU

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Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT)

Driven by Private Media Owners

More than one DTT operator active

in Dark Blue countries – Q4-2014

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe

currently only GOtv is active in the

Purple countries. This is expected to

change with StarTimes entering in

2015.

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Trends in Africa Smart Screen Adoption

Other routes for Digital Broadcast Media to reach users?

• Low cost – sub US$ 50 – smartphones

and tablets now entering the market.

• 20% of all African Mobile users had a

smartphone by year end 2014

• They are a “First Screen” for many Africans.

• But also ‘Media screens without a tuner’.

• Smart-devices allow for media consumption,

but NOT linear TV ( yet! ).

• Bottlenecks: Access to Electricity, and with

current devices, to Broadcast TV content

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The Role That Satellite Plays

• For cost-efficient national coverage of

DTT an overlay with DTH makes most

sense.

• Satellite already used for distribution of

(regionalised) broadcast signals to DTT

towers.

• C-band is often used in Africa because

it provides a reliable way to deal with

“rain fade”

• Satellite may also play a role in

distributing non-linear content of digital

media to smart devices in Africa.

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Thank You !