Mwaniki Wahome
19 February 2008
Nairobi — The Government today named an 11-man team to oversee the country's shift from analogue to digital broadcasting.
Kenya guns to fully embrace digital broadcasting by 2015.
Speaking at Teleposta Towers, Information permanent secretary, Dr Bitange Ndemo said the anticipated shift had resulted in sweeping price reductions of analogue televisions. He however warned consumers of possible dumping of economical analogue television sets.
"We have no legal case to stop the imports but it's good for the customer to know the developments in the market." Dr Ndemo said.
It is estimated that 2.7 million Kenyan households own a television set, most of which are analogue sets. Consumers will be required to purchase a convertor box to access digital content.
The digital televisions, which retail at Sh170, 000 are still too expensive for most consumers to afford.
Quick conversion
Digital Television Committee chairman, Mr Daniel Obam said the broadcasting industry needs to hasten towards digital broadcast considering that most countries were already in their final digital switch process.
In the developed nations, Germany migrated to digital broadcasting during the 2006 World Cup. Britain has already stopped the stocking of analogue televisions whereas in Africa, South Africa anticipates to complete the process by 2011, ahead of the 2010 World Cup fete.
"We are at the tail end of migration timetable. We want to do it early to ensure we are not caught up when we are obliged to switch over to digital in 2015" Mr Obam said.
The committee will consult with consumers, retailers and equipment manufacturers in the process of accelerating the adoption of the digital televisions.
Among the benefits that consumers of digital content will have is the variety of programmes with high quality resolutions.
The 11 member committee consisting of experts from private and public sectors was formed following a recommendation by Analogue to Digital Broadcasting Migration task force formed earlier by the government, and handed its report in October 2007.
Among its mandate is to explore into broadcasting signal distribution as part of migration process which is expected to be completed by 2012.
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