While it is now “impossible” for South Africa to meet the June deadline to transition from analogue to digital broadcasting, industry will now be in a position to launch the digital terrestrial television (DTT) project within this year.

Following Cabinet’s decision to include a control system for the set-top boxes (STBs) required to intercept digital broadcasting frequencies, a digital switch-on date – and subsequent analogue switch-off – marking the start of South Africa’s DTT migration was expected to be announced “shortly”.

The South African Communications Forum (SACF), which had come out in support of Cabinet’s decision, hoped all stakeholders could “now move on” and work with government to roll out the much delayed migration.

“Most of the information and communications technology industry is breathing a sigh of relief that this decision is finally being taken and hopes that we can speedily begin implementation,” SACF CEO Loren Braithwaite-Kabosha said in a statement on Thursday.

Cabinet’s decision was the right one, she said, noting that the use of a control system for the subsidised STBs was in the “best interest” of consumers and would promote industrial development, job creation, access to information and black economic empowerment, as well as provide a better experience for viewers of free-to-air broadcasts.

Further, abandoning the control system would have led to further delays, something that South Africa could not afford, particularly in light of the need to urgently access the coveted spectrum, or digital dividend, which would be released when the nation completed the migration, to enable greater mobile broadband penetration.

“If Cabinet had decided to drop the control system altogether, then the South Africa Bureau of Standards’ specifications would have had to be changed – at minimum this would have further delayed the launch of DTT migration by six months to a year,” Braithwaite-Kabosha pointed out.

However, National Association of Manufacturers in Electronic Components president Keith Thabo did not agree, believing that the selection of vendors for the control system would delay the deployment of the digital switchover by one to two years, as due process would be required in the issue of a tender.

He further said that the addition of a control system would hike the price of STBs by between $9 and $12 each – adding more than R450-million to government’s R4-billion bill for the subsidised decoders for five-million of South Africa’s poorest households.