31 Jul 2016

The government has, so far, spent P180 million on digital migration, the Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Eric Molale, has said.

The cost, the minister said, had covered infrastructure upgrade, establishment of the data broadcasting service, upgrading of lighting systems for Botswana Television as well as acquisitions of cameras and upgrading of satellite  systems which enables the transmission of the digital signal to the terrestrial network.

The terrestrial infrastructure for digital television, the minister said, was completed during the last financial year, and “we are on track and therefore we believe that the digital migration project will be on course.”

“This provided connectivity to any customer premises with appropriate receiving equipment, including set top boxes, commonly known as decoders,” he added. 

As with any project of this magnitude, Mr Molale said the service had to be tested before being rolled out. For this reason, he said during the period from June 2015 up to now, 100 premises were connected for trial.  Having gone through that trial period, the minister said they intended that to facilitate the connection of a further 6 900 set top boxes during the month of August 2016.

In as far as connection is concerned, Mr Molale said there was no delay, adding that infrastructure was ready. However, what remained, he said was for the country to acquire the required receiving equipment, the set top boxes.

“What we did, in this regard, is to float an expression of interest in the country to invite citizen companies who can possibly, in the first instance, supply the set top boxes and, probably later, even manufacture or assemble them locally,” he explained.

However, after selecting companies that were thought to have submitted reasonable bids, the minister said the companies then experienced some problems with a number of issues. He said they were now discussing with them, with a view to finding a way of how they could resolve those problems, regarding set top boxes.

The main reception mode, he said, was through a set top box whose average price ranged between P500 and P750. Going forward, he said new TVs that were being manufactured had built in or switch in modes that could automatically receive the signal. 

“If I may give an analogy, when we switched on from a regular, or whatever the name that was used for the old type of petrol, we encouraged those people whose vehicles were not able to utilise the new petrol to buy convertors so that they can use the new petrol,” said Mr Molale.

He said the set top boxes were similar to what one would call a converter because new TVs had these in-built switches that could automatically receive the transmission. 

“So, this P500 to P750 will be for the purchase of set top boxes for those TVs that do not have in-built automatic switch on to digital mode,” he added.

However, the minister stated that there were no plans to assist households to purchase set top boxes “as we believe that the 500 000 households who have access to TVs can ably purchase that.”

“But, we encourage that going forward, and we are going to be publishing that in the DailyNews that people when buying new TVs must ask questions as to whether the TVs were equipped such that they can receive the digital mode,” he added. 

Gaborone North MP, Mr Haskins Nkaigwa had wanted to know how many households had connected to the network, what was delaying connection and how much had been spent by the government for the digital migration.

He also wanted to know the expenditure by individual households to connect to the network, if there was any plan by the government to assist Batswana to connect to the network, and if the government was happy with the progress made so far.ENDS