Nigeria is not likely to meet the July 2015 deadline to switch off analogue terrestrial television broadcasts, according to a reliable source within the government.
The source, who pleaded not to be named, said the Federal Government was no longer keen on the digital migration project, which it agreed to with the International Telecommunication Union.
“It is rather interested in curtailing the excesses of Boko Haram insurgents, crushing opposition
political parties and strategising to win 2015 general elections,” he said.
According to him, the government has even become more relaxed having been convinced that South-Africa, despite its advancement in the broadcast sector, would not also meet the mid-2015 deadline.
This disclosure was made on Wednesday; just two days (Monday) after the Cable News Network reported that sub-Saharan countries, including South Africa and Nigeria, would fail to meet the deadline they agreed to with the ITU, which forms part of the United Nations.
“The President Goodluck Jonathan administration had probably pre-empted the CNN report long before now and decided to place its focus and money on some other ‘top-notch issues’.
“The presidency even became very withdrawn from the project when it received first hand report months ago that a more advanced and developed country like South-Africa, which it also sees as a rival in Africa, would not meet up with the digital migration deadline,” the source added.
Countries in the region had agreed to the deadline, after which the ITU would not protect their traditional analogue TV frequencies from cross-border interference.
An international consulting and research firm, Ovum, however, blamed a lack of awareness among the Nigerian public that an analogue switch-off is impending and inadequate funds being made available by governments to roll out digital TV infrastructure.
The firm said in a statement, which was stumbled on by our correspondent, that there was an insufficient supply of set-top boxes in the markets.
It said that South Africa had missed a number of self-imposed deadlines to introduce digital broadcasting. “The country lost a year of the process after government vacillated over which standard to use for digital television.
“More recently, a high-stakes battle between MultiChoice and E.tv over whether free-to-air digital set-top boxes should use a control system based on encryption has led to further significant delays,” the statement read.
Ovum’s Lead Analyst for Global TV Markets, Adams Thomas, signed the statement.
It noted that although Nigeria had never been likely to meet the ITU deadline, the prevalent mindset among the government and regulator(s) was that the deadline must be met at all costs.
It, therefore, said that numerous sub-Saharan TV markets were considering switching off analogue TV signals before the audience had transitioned to digital. “This would mean many homes will lose TV reception, leading to advertisers switching away from TV and, in turn, a decline in TV advertising revenue,” the statement read.
Ovum’s Ismail Patel, who tracks media and entertainment across the Asian, Middle Eastern and African regions, said that in Tanzania, the switchover process was pushed through recklessly, with damaging results.
“Thousands of homes lost their ability to watch TV and advertising revenue suffered as a result. But this mentality to rush the process persists, not least in Kenya, which seems intent on repeating the same mistakes,” Patel said.
He informed that there was an understandable eagerness among regulators to raise revenue from the sale of the spectrum that would become available following analogue switch-off and which would, most likely, be snapped up by mobile operators. “This is leading to a rushed switchover,” he added.
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