South Africa’s digital TV disaster

South Africa’s analogue TV switch-off deadline has been moved forward to 31 July 2024, hopefully hastening the finalisation of the twenty-year project.

This is according to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), in its annual performance plan for the 2024/25 financial year.

However, it is unclear if Icasa made a mistake in the document.

It states, “In June 2023, the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies announced that South Africa will finally switch off analogue TV broadcasts by the 31st of July 2024.”

This is incorrect.

Communications minister Mondli Gungubele published a notice in the Government Gazette last year that 31 December 2024 was the final analogue switch-off deadline.

Icasa has assured that it consulted with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies while preparing its annual performance plan.

Whether the switch-off happens in July or December, South Africa’s digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration is thirteen years overdue.

Listening to government officials, you might hear talk of a June 2019 deadline. Or perhaps the 17 June 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union.

However, the truth is that South Africa aimed to have 80% digital TV signal coverage in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which kicked off on 11 June that year.

Total switch-off of South Africa’s analogue TV signal would follow on 1 November 2011.

Government missed both of these deadlines and the constant delays plaguing South Africa’s digital TV migration have cost the country dearly.

Besides robbing South Africans of better quality terrestrial TV viewing, it also held back the release of new wireless network capacity in the form of spectrum for a decade.

Called the “digital dividend”, Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, and Cell C previously said they could have used this spectrum to improve network coverage and drive down data prices.

What’s even more disappointing is that these deadlines weren’t particularly ambitious.

South Africa had been gearing up to migrate from its old PAL-based analogue terrestrial TV system to a DTT standard for ten years before the 2011 deadline.

In 2001, the late communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri appointed a Digital Broadcasting Advisory Board.

By the following year, the board had recommended that South Africa switch to the European DVB-T standard.

On 8 September 2008, Matsepe-Casaburri published the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy. It was more than a year late.

The following year, she still provided assurances that South Africa was on track to meet the FIFA World Cup and November 2011 deadlines.

The last major task that remained before South Africa’s analogue switch-off was producing and distributing decoder-like devices called set-top boxes (STBs).

These STBs would enable people without satellite TV to watch the new digital TV signal on their existing television sets.

However, the first cracks started to show in February 2010, when Icasa warned that the analogue switch-off might be delayed to April 2013.

A decade of groundwork undone

Then, in April 2010, the Department of Communications upended all the work done since 2001 to appease the Brazilian government.

Brazil lobbied South Africa to switch to the Japanese standard it had adopted, ISDB-T, hoping to expand its DTT ecosystem and license its middleware to South Africa.

For the rest of 2010, there was much hand-wringing and think-piece writing over the uncertainty.

Logic eventually prevailed, and the late Minister Roy Padayachie announced at the start of 2011 that South Africa would not use ISDB-T, but a newer version of the European standard called DVB-T2.

Everything seemed back on track, but for one major red flag — government’s dithering over standards had given it an excuse to extend the analogue switch-off deadline from November 2011 to December 2013.

This set off a chain reaction of delays and missed deadlines. It also ignited an acrimonious feud between MultiChoice and E-tv over whether South Africa’s digital TV decoders should include encryption technology.

Secret MultiChoice–SABC deal

E-tv argued that, without signal encryption, South Africa’s government-subsidised STBs would simply be scalped in other countries that adopted the DVB-T2 standard.

MultiChoice argued that E-tv’s concerns were overblown and could be mitigated in other ways. It also said that putting encryption features in government-subsidised STBs would needlessly increase their cost.

Both these arguments were a smokescreen.

DStv’s subscribers would not be impacted by the digital migration at all. MultiChoice was sensitive about the encryption issue because it would have allowed E-tv owner eMedia a subsidised entry into South Africa’s pay-TV sector.

Signal encryption is essential if you want to offer a pay-TV service, and MultiChoice felt it was unfair that E-tv would not have to fund the development and distribution of its own pay-TV decoder.

As the companies duked it out in the media and eventually in court, MultiChoice and its allies splurged on full-page advertisements in Sunday newspapers criticising government’s decision to include encryption technology in its subsidised STBs.

Then, between 2015 and 2017, investigative journalists exposed the terms of the commercial agreement between MultiChoice and the SABC that ensured the public broadcaster’s allegiance to the anti-encryption campaign.

While the deal was mainly about how much MultiChoice would pay to carry channels like SABC News and SABC Encore, it included a strange provision about DTT encryption.

The contract allowed MultiChoice to suspend its channel carriage agreement with the SABC if it broadcast encrypted channels on digital terrestrial television platforms.

Having the state broadcaster in MultiChoice’s corner complicated matters for the government, which was trying to push ahead with existing STB standards that included encryption.

All of this resulted in missed deadlines compounding upon missed deadlines, to the point that South Africa’s digital migration is still not fully completed.

Much progress had been made in the past three years thanks to the work done under two communications ministers: Khumbudzo Ntshavheni and Mondli Gungubele.

With President Cyril Ramaphosa’s backing, and incentivised to secure a multi-billion-rand cash injection for the fiscus, Ntshavheni pushed through a spectrum auction in March 2022.

Crucially, the auction included a substantial chunk of digital dividend spectrum, and Ntshavheni worked to ensure the digital TV migration was done before the spectrum went on sale.

While legal action by eMedia frustrated the analogue switch-off, the auction forged ahead.

However, the operators said they would not pay for the digital dividend spectrum until broadcasters had vacated the auctioned bands.

Icasa, under chairman Keabetswe Modimoeng, developed and released the auction rules, then revised them after legal threats by Telkom and MTN.

Telkom remained dissatisfied, but the auction continued despite the legal axe looming over Icasa’s proverbial neck. Telkom ultimately settled its case against Icasa out of court.

The auction attracted close to R14.5 billion in winning bids from Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C, Rain, and Liquid.

However, to secure payment for the digital dividend spectrum, government had to complete the analogue switch-off.

eMedia continued its legal action, complaining that government hadn’t done enough to ensure all households requiring STBs had received them. It warned that millions would be cut off.

Gungubele’s administration came up with a compromise. It switched off all analogue TV services above 694 MHz, releasing the auctioned spectrum while allowing TV broadcasters to use frequencies below that for the time being.

With the final analogue switch-off date scheduled for 31 July 2024, even more of the digital dividend will become available, which Icasa has said it is keen to auction off.

The revolution will be streamed

While the progress in South Africa’s digital TV migration is welcome, a ten-year delay is as good as a death sentence in tech.

After all the blood, sweat, and lawyers’ fees that went into the digital migration, it is sad to see South Africa’s DVB-T2 system relegated to little more than a white elephant.

Years of bureaucratic hell have eroded any value digital terrestrial TV might have had for our country.

Recent statistics from the Market Research Foundation show that traditional TV viewership in South Africa is in freefall while streaming services like Netflix are on the rise.

The revolution will not be broadcast — it is being streamed over the Internet.

Yet, the greater tragedy is how the digital dividend was held hostage for no good reason.

For ten years, government squandered the opportunity to improve connectivity and drive down cellular prices.

While conflicting vested interests and a smattering of corruption are likely to blame, it’s also because it was a hard problem.

Each mobile operator has its own idea of what a fair distribution of spectrum looks like, and every broadcaster its own opinion on the digital migration.

Whatever Icasa and the minister decided, they would’ve ended up in court.

It’s much easier just to do nothing, which is exactly what happened until someone came along willing to put in the hard yards and get it done.

Hopefully, that attitude — and the ability to see this fiasco through — will still be around when Parliament reconvenes after last week’s general elections.