With less than 16 months left, questions are being asked as to whether Uganda will beat the December 2012 deadline of switching from analogue to Digital TV. A couple of posts of interest:
UBC Not ready … Daily Monitor
Government Stops … New Vision
My observations so far:
There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the migration from analogue to digital TV. For example, the general public perception is that this switch would necessitate households to subscribe to a TV digital provider. There’s very little information with the exception of the informational TV ads that were run by Uganda Communications Commison (UCC) a few months back.
There’s lack of any serious pilot testing taking place at the moment. The only broadcaster currently transmitting a Free to Air signal is Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC). With more broadcasters allowed to run tests, I believe most early adopters would begin to switch.
Do you live in Uganda? What do you think?
http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2011/08/10/chinese-loan-blocked-amidst-overpricing-fears/
I wrote this about the subject yesterday.
It seems very unlikely to happen by 2012, as the UCC pointed out, USA and UK took 5 and 6 years for migration, and Uganda is expected to complete the process in as many months? The lack of funding is the least of the problems. The government needs to allow other companies to broadcast over digital, otherwise it depends on UBC too much, and gives the company incredible leverage over the government.