South Africa’s digital TV disaster

The North Gauteng High Court has suspended the 31 March analogue switch-off deadline, and South Africa’s communications regulator says many of the set-top boxes (STBs) sponsored by the state are faulty.

Moreover, many of the STBs were produced in 2015 and many of them have become faulty.

This was revealed in the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa’s) Findings Document on the Review of Digital Migration Regulations.

According to Icasa, many stakeholders involved in the transition to digital terrestrial television (DTT) are concerned about the viability of the transition, considering the slow rollout of STBs.

It said the government’s subsidised STB registration and installation project has been plagued by Post Office closures, a non-operational online registration system, and limited public awareness of where to register for the decoders.

It also highlighted technical issues as a major concern.

“Reports indicated that a significant percentage of the installed STBs are faulty, exacerbated by a lack of software updates,” it said in the document, published in the Government Gazette.

“These STBs were manufactured in 2015 and may no longer meet current technological requirements.”

Icasa also warned that the legal definition of indigent households has shifted. However, the eligibility criteria for STBs are still tied to the previous definition of a combined household income of R3,500 per month.

“This outdated definition excludes many households, as the legal definition of indigent income is now R6,500 according to Stats SA,” the regulator said.

Other challenges regarding the slow rollout of STBs include poor reception in some areas of the country, which has discouraged many households from adopting DTT and a lack of commercial availability for the STBs.

This means households not qualifying for the state-subsidised STB struggle to find a location that sells the decoders.

South Africa’s mission to ditch analogue TV signals in favour of DTT has been in the works for around two decades and has been fraught with delays and barriers almost from the beginning.

The project aims to free up valuable radio frequency spectrum for other purposes. Analogue broadcasts use far more of the spectrum than digital.

At the same time, digital broadcasts support higher-quality audio and video.

Freeing up the radio frequency spectrum will improve the capacity available to wireless telecommunication networks, such as cellular operators, and could enable them to reduce mobile data prices.

The most recent development came after a legal bid from eMedia, Media Monitoring Africa, and the SOS Coalition to block the analogue switch-off deadline of 31 March 2025, requested by communications minister Solly Malatsi.

The Northern Gauteng High Court instructed Malatsi to suspend the deadline and interdicted him from taking any steps to implement the switch-off of analogue signals and end dual illumination.

Judge Selby Baqwa heard and analysed the case. In his judgement, he wrote that the public would suffer if analogue TV signals were shut off on 31 March.

“The harm is not just a temporary inconvenience. Each day without access to news, public service announcements, and educational programming results in irreversible loss of knowledge, awareness, and democratic participation,” he said.

The legal bid came after Malatsi had asked that the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies postpone the previous deadline of 31 December 2024.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and eMedia had expressed concerns that the deadline would leave a large portion of their viewers in broadcasting darkness.

The latest proposed deadline of 31 March 2025 now adds to the nearly 20 missed deadlines for South Africa’s broadcast digital migration project.

The table below lists the numerous missed deadlines surrounding the project, as well as the numerous ministers that have come and gone since it began.