Big battle ahead for South Africa’s new communications minister

President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Solly Malatsi as South Africa’s new communications minister on Sunday, 30 June 2024, and he has the opportunity to make significant progress on several government initiatives.

These include South Africa’s broadcast digital migration and shutting down the country’s 2G and 3G networks.

With Malatsi as communications minister, former minister Mondli Gungubele has been demoted to deputy minister in the department.

The broadcast digital migration project has been a hot potato passed between fourteen ministers in as many years.

Only since Gungubele and his predecessor Khumbudzo Ntshavheni was significant progress made in switching off South Africa’s old analogue television signals.

The constant delays had huge ramifications, as the television signals occupied radio frequency spectrum that South Africa’s mobile networks could have otherwise used.

Ntshavheni also made progress on releasing new spectrum and announced the shutdown of South Africa’s 2G and 3G networks in 2022. She then passed the ball to Gungubele.

Gungubele was appointed as communications minister in March 2023 when Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet.

The two effectively swapped roles during the March 2023 reshuffle, with Ntshavheni taking over Gungubele’s old post in The Presidency.

During his time as minister, Gungubele set final deadlines for the broadcast digital migration project, announcing 31 December 2024 as the day all analogue TV broadcasts will be switched off.

This follows an intermediate deadline of 31 July 2024 for switching off all broadcasts above 694Mhz.

He also progressed the policy to switch off South Africa’s 2G and 3G networks.

With Malatsi taking over, he is mandated to enable South Africa’s digital transformation to achieve digital inclusion and economic growth.

This includes further progressing these projects handed off by former ministers, plagued by delays and missed deadlines.

Broadcast digital migration

South Africa’s broadcast digital migration project aims to move away from inefficient analogue signals to more efficient digital terrestrial television (DTT) transmissions.

This will help free up critical radio frequency spectrum for wireless mobile broadband services like 4G and 5G.

However, the DTT migration requires South African households who rely on roof antennas and “bunny ears” for television to be capable of receiving digital signals.

For those with older television sets, this requires a decoder-like set-top box (STB), which is unaffordable for many poorer households.

STBs are decoder-like devices that translate digital TV signals into a format older TVs with analogue tuners can display.

To address the affordability challenges, the government has subsidised STBs for these households to ensure no one is left behind when the analogue signals are terminated.

Malatsi could face an uphill battle to switch off analogue TV by 31 December 2024, as some broadcasting players don’t support the deadline.

eMedia CEO Khalik Sherrif said around 4.3 million households still lack the STBs required to access DTT transmission.

He said that if this situation persists by the final switch-off date, these households will be left without access to critical information via TV.

“Our condition is simply clear. When you move all these people across, and we’re happy to switch off. Then it is worth our while as a business that relies on that market,” said Sheriff.

“We are free-to-air. These are the people who loyally look at what we do. They are our customers. They are the people that make up our numbers.”

He indicated that the broadcaster would be happy to deactivate analogue TV if the figure of 4.3 million households is reduced to around one million.

Sherrif also described DTT as a failure in South Africa and said the plan to “re-instil” DTT isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

2G and 3G switch-off

Shutting down South Africa’s 2G and 3G networks aims to free up radio frequency spectrum to expand 4G and 5G connectivity in the country.

It was first announced by Ntshavheni in 2022 when she outlined an aggressive plan to ban the sale and licensing of 2G and 3G devices and shut down 2G and 3G network services.

However, this project has also faced several delays.

Ntshavheni set an initial deadline of 30 June 2023 for the prohibition on licencing 2G devices. This was to be followed by several other deadlines spaced roughly three months apart.

By 31 March 2024, the goal was to have 2G services shut down and the sale of new 3G devices prohibited.

A year later, all 2G and 3G networks and services were set to be shut down.

Ntshavheni’s first set of deadlines was criticised by the country’s mobile networks and telecoms stakeholders, and were ultimately missed.

In his budget vote speech in May 2023, former communications minister Gungubele said South Africa’s final next-generation spectrum policy would be published in September 2023.

This policy would set the final deadlines for decommissioning South Africa’s legacy networks. However, the policy was only released at the end of May 2024.

It confirmed deadlines the DCDT had provided to MyBroadband in February, extending the 2G and 3G switch-off by two years.

The government plans to commence the shutdown on 1 June 2025 and deactivate all 2G and 3G networks by December 2027.

A potential issue is that 2G and 3G devices are still popular in South Africa and are widely used for machine-to-machine communication, among other things.

These users will have to transition to more expensive 4G and 5G devices before this date, presenting another challenge for South Africa’s new minister.