South Africa may once again miss the deadline for migration of its broadcast signal from analog to digital. Policy amendments, government’s indecisiveness over the signal type and a court battle over whether controlled access should be used for set-top boxes has delayed the process. Sumitra Nydoo looks at the implications of missing the June global migration deadline.
South Africa’s digital migration project has stumbled from farce to tragedy. The country will miss the June deadline. Indeed, it might not even have started commercial digital broadcasts by then, let alone switched off analogue signals. The economic cost of these delays runs into billions of shillings.
