South Africa’s long-belated digital migration process may be delayed until 2017, according to the budget vote of the newly established Department of Communications (DOC), which is tasked with managing ‘the digital broadcasting migration to ensure the successful migration from analogue to digital television in South Africa within two years’.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the migration process deadline, which was originally scheduled for completion in November 2011 in line with a Cabinet decision taken in 2007, has since been pushed back to 1 December 2013, and subsequently 17 June 2015 (the International Telecommunication Union’s [ITU’s] deadline for analogue switch-off). After 17 June, the ITU will no longer protect countries from cross-border radio spectrum interference from those that have completed their digital migration projects.