Pessimism trails Nigeria’s digital migration

SES, leading satellite operator says Direct-To-Home service (DTH) remains the sustainable solution to drive television digitalisation, as paucity of regulation, funding, unrealistic deadline, amongst other impediments, poses a significant threat to achieving Nigeria’s quest for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) migration, which ends June next year. The DTH is a wireless digital platform that provides satellite television programming directly to subscribers’ home anywhere in the country, providing the subscribers the option of paying for any channels or services they intend to use.

Maintaining this position while analysing the update on digitalisation in Africa during the SES broadcast summit held in Lagos, weekend Russell Southwood, chief executive officer, Balancing Act said, there are compendium of bottlenecks that will hinder Nigeria from meeting the digital migration deadline, which comes up mid next year, adding that the DHT remains the best platform for Nigeria to adopt. “The DTT and DTH are two different platforms that cannot be compared in all ramifications, the DTT requires sufficient infrastructure which normally roll out in certain locations, thereby impeding 100 percent coverage, the cost of DTT is quite exorbitant compared to DTH, Russell further added. “Yes, the deadline has been fixed by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) which is less than one year from now.

 “Even if Nigeria has all the strategies and funding to switch from the analogue to the DTT, which is not possible, the deadline can never be met” and the DTH has always been the best platform, Russell added.

Many African countries had embarked on the analogue switch over, “it took Mauritius, a very smaller population compared to Nigeria eight years to achieve the DTT migration and Nigeria is a vast country with a lot of challenges, he said. 

According to Jean-Pierre Kabanda, vice president, business development, Sub Saharan Africa, SES, India and Germany are perfect examples of the SES success stories in terms of embracing the DTH platform which offers 100 percent coverage in any country, coupled with the advance viewing control features such as the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG).         

“The EPG allows the subscribers to check current and future programmes on all channels, what it takes is just to install the set top boxes and dishes at the homes of the subscribers and SES is poised to training people that will do the installation, Jean- Pierre added. 

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“SES will train anybody who is willing to be an installer in Nigeria, by doing this; it will definitely generate employment for the trainees. We have been doing this and will continue to do that, what we need is to make satellite a solution for digitalisation in Nigeria, said Theodore Asampong, ‎director of sales, SES.