South Africa needs to move faster to unlock the digital dividend expected from the migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT) as the June 2015 deadline for the analogue switch-off looms.

This was the message that the Minister tasked with advancing South Africa’s long-awaited migration delivered on the first day of the Commonwealth Digital Broadcasting Switchover Forum 2015, being held in Fourways, from February 17 to 19.

“We do not have a choice, we have to migrate as soon as possible,” Communications Minister Faith Muthambi said on Tuesday, highlighting that government, broadcasters and consumers, collectively, had to do everything in their power to avert the dire consequences of not migrating to DTT.

South Africa, along with a number of other African countries, had until June 17 to complete the migration or face frequency disruption as the International Telecommunication Union lifted the protection on the analogue television signals.

It had been “quite a long time” since South Africa had embarked on the process of moving the broadcasting frequencies over to digital; however, Muthambi noted that the same could be said of other African countries – with mixed results.

Some African countries had made good progress in migrating to the digital signal, while others had failed to gain any traction.

While no details were offered, she noted that the countries failing to meet the deadline would face serious challenges with tough lessons to be learned.

In the opening speech to the conference, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation secretary-general Professor Tim Unwin noted that countries struggling with the switchover needed to realise that it was likely the deadline would be missed and that solutions needed to be developed now to mitigate the imminent disputes and challenges they would have to deal with.

It was a reality that Africa was not going to universally complete the migration in time, which brought to a head the practical issues of running both analogue and digital frequencies post the deadline.

However, while many African countries grappled with their migrations, Mauritius, Tanzania and Rwanda had already completed the switchover, with the migration process ongoing in Botswana, Kenya, Cameroon and Nigeria.