Pay TV dealer ask UCC to up digital switch awareness

Kampala

Pay Television service providers have asked the Uganda Communications Commission to heighten analogue-to-digital migration awareness for Uganda to move in the same direction with other countries and meet the deadline.

Mr Simon Arineitwe, the Star-Times country sales manager, said not more than 30 per cent of Ugandans understand digital migration and why they should embrace it.

“We appreciate UCC has put out bill-boards about digital migration but that is not enough. UCC should adopt an interactive communication strategy such as workshops, radio and road shows to explain what this is all about,” Mr Arineitwe said last week in Kampala. He added: “For digital migration to succeed, information dissemination is core and getting on ground is important for the common man to know what digital migration is.”

Low public awareness, however, is not the only challenge facing digital migration but the cost of the terminal equipment, especially set top boxes or decoders is also still high, making them inaccessible by majority of Ugandans.

The government had initially set December this year as the deadline for the two million analogue TV viewers to switch to digital broadcasting.

Like Uganda, most African nations approved a continental digital television switch-over that would be completed by 2015 and are therefore part of the revolution that is set to bring with it more choice and more value to television viewers.

fkulabako@ug.nationmedia.com