CCK firm on switch-off from analogue to digital TV date

By MACHARIA KAMAU

Over half a million households in Nairobi risk losing access to a crucial information source with the looming switch off of the analogue television broadcasting signal set for December 13 this year.

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has reaffirmed its determination to switch-off analogue television signals in December and said there is no likelihood of a postponement.

This is despite the fact that close to half of the 1.2 million households with television sets in Nairobi are yet to acquire the gadgets.

This could translate into millions of Nairobi residents experiencing programme blackouts given that households in the city, on average have three people.

CCK Director General Francis Wangusi said the commission would this week commence a consumer awareness campaign to get about 500,000 households to purchase set top boxes before the deadline.

Set top boxes are gadgets that decode digital signals that are broadcast on digital platforms for viewing on ordinary television sets. Most of the television sets in the Kenyan market are analogue.

“There are about 1.2 million households with television sets and more than half of these are already on different digital platforms…just about 500,000 are yet to acquire set top boxes,” said Wangusi.

Phased approach

He said CCK expects that this figure would significantly change in the coming weeks. The change over to the digital platform is expected to take place in a phased approach, starting with Nairobi and then moving on to other parts of the country.

According to the CCK schedule unveiled in August, the analogue signal in other towns will be switched off in stages and the entire country will have migrated to the digital platform by June 14, 2014. This would be a year earlier than the global deadline of June 17 2015.

Pay TV firms as well as independent distributors of free to air set top boxes have been angling for a boom in business that the switch off is expected to bring.

There are two types of set top boxes in the market – pay TV and free to air set top boxes.

Pay TV decoders are based on a subscription model where a viewer has to pay to get content. This is unlike free to air, where customers pay a one-off equipment acquisition fee and have access to free to air channels. CCK has a list of decoders that are approved for sale in Kenya.

Pay TV providers have in the recent past upped their offering to lure subscribers by increasing the content available on their platforms as well as an offer of free to air decoders that can later be upgraded to pay television status.

New subscribers

“Content will be a key differentiator to retain and attract new subscribers especially after the switch-off of the analogue signals,” said Leo Lee, chief executive, StarTimes.

The migration process has been dogged by controversies and postponed severally due to a low level of preparedness among crucial players as well as claims of limited consumer awareness.

The switch-off of the analogue signal was initially slated for July 2012 but changed to September and then December of the same year.

This, however, did not take place due to a legal case filed at the High Court where the court stopped the  swith-off process on the grounds it may have denied a number of Kenyans access to crucial information given the elections that were about to take place in March this year.

Digital migrations will increase the spectrum for use in deployment of other ICT services including mobile broadband.  It will also facilitate a wider choice of programmes, and allow for plurality of content.