The
Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has announced June 17, 2017 as
the new date for the country to complete the digital switchover and
achieve analogue switch off.
This was made known by the Director General of the NBC, Mr Emeka Mba during a press briefing at the Protea Hotel Ikeja, Lagos, last week. He said the new date was arrived at after a coordinated agreement with Nigeria’s West African neighbours, while lamenting the failure of the country to meet the initial deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that the world must switch from analogue broadcasting to digital by June 2015.
He said part of the reasons the country was unable to meet the June 2015 deadline was in part due to paucity of funds and bureaucratic bottlenecks that did not allow the White Paper on the issue to come out until June 2012 when the ITU had set the terminal date since 2006.
“We copiously explained how much work we had done since June 2006 when the deadline was announced, using our meagre recurrent resources, while waiting for government to provide both direction and financial support to enable us meet the high expense elements of the transition.
“It was not until June 17, 2012 that the White Paper giving direction to the process came out. Again, we continued doing those things we could which included engaging and sensitising the broadcast sector, setting out the technical specifications for the set top box and putting in place then Electronic Programme Guide system, in addition to a successful pilot project in Jos, Plateau State. All this while we were waiting for the financing of our budget of 70 Billion Naira from the government.
“Meanwhile, we have now coordinated another agreement with our West African neighbours and have agreed on a new deadline of June 20, 2017 to complete the digital switchover and achieve analogue switch off. When it became obvious that government could not spare the money, and in order to avoid missing another deadline, we began to consider other options. Our broadcast frequency, which is to eventually form part of the digital dividend after the DSO, had portions of it lying fallow while our broadcasters were still using parts of it. We therefore proposed and got proper permission from government to license part of our spectrum lying fallow and to use the proceeds to finance the DSO,” Mba explained.
H e also announced that NBC has successfully licensed MTN Nigeria to use a part of the 700 MHZ to provide digital pay TV broadcasting services. This, he said, allowed the NBC to raise N34 billion, a figure he said represented 50 per cent of their budget.
He pointed out that Nigeria has through this singular move, shown the way for other African countries struggling with the effort of finding financing for their own digital switchover programmes.
This was made known by the Director General of the NBC, Mr Emeka Mba during a press briefing at the Protea Hotel Ikeja, Lagos, last week. He said the new date was arrived at after a coordinated agreement with Nigeria’s West African neighbours, while lamenting the failure of the country to meet the initial deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that the world must switch from analogue broadcasting to digital by June 2015.
He said part of the reasons the country was unable to meet the June 2015 deadline was in part due to paucity of funds and bureaucratic bottlenecks that did not allow the White Paper on the issue to come out until June 2012 when the ITU had set the terminal date since 2006.
“We copiously explained how much work we had done since June 2006 when the deadline was announced, using our meagre recurrent resources, while waiting for government to provide both direction and financial support to enable us meet the high expense elements of the transition.
“It was not until June 17, 2012 that the White Paper giving direction to the process came out. Again, we continued doing those things we could which included engaging and sensitising the broadcast sector, setting out the technical specifications for the set top box and putting in place then Electronic Programme Guide system, in addition to a successful pilot project in Jos, Plateau State. All this while we were waiting for the financing of our budget of 70 Billion Naira from the government.
“Meanwhile, we have now coordinated another agreement with our West African neighbours and have agreed on a new deadline of June 20, 2017 to complete the digital switchover and achieve analogue switch off. When it became obvious that government could not spare the money, and in order to avoid missing another deadline, we began to consider other options. Our broadcast frequency, which is to eventually form part of the digital dividend after the DSO, had portions of it lying fallow while our broadcasters were still using parts of it. We therefore proposed and got proper permission from government to license part of our spectrum lying fallow and to use the proceeds to finance the DSO,” Mba explained.
H e also announced that NBC has successfully licensed MTN Nigeria to use a part of the 700 MHZ to provide digital pay TV broadcasting services. This, he said, allowed the NBC to raise N34 billion, a figure he said represented 50 per cent of their budget.
He pointed out that Nigeria has through this singular move, shown the way for other African countries struggling with the effort of finding financing for their own digital switchover programmes.
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