TV in Africa: The Long-awaited Ramp-up of DTT Migration

South Africa, April 1, 2023 - The most developed country in Sub-Saharan Africa, should finally switch off its analogue TV signal, 8 years after the original deadline fixed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Indeed, on 16 June 2006, the ITU signed an agreement with 54 African countries to switch off the analogue TV signal by 17 June 2015. The objective of such migration to digital television has been to offer consumers not only improved sound and image quality but also a greater diversity of content: with the same bandwidth of 8MHz, digital can offer up to 20 TV channels while analogue was usually limited to one. The transition to digital would offer a wider range of content to consumers and also free up bandwidth for other services, especially mobile broadband.

Low growth of DTT share of FTA TV households
Although the number of DTT FTA households is expected to increase slightly from 38% in 2022 to 41% in 2027, this is still a relatively low increase at the regional level, as DTH will remain the most widely used technology. Given the difficulty encountered by public initiatives, private players have deployed their own network. TV owners can access pay DTT TV services by subscribing to GOtv (subsidiary of the South African Multichoice), to the Chinese StarTimes or to EasyTV (subsidiary of the French Canal+). This strategy, significantly more present in African countries than in the rest of the world, provides pay DTT to 24% of direct pay TV households.

In 2022, the DTT signal reached more than 90% of the population in 14 countries only
While most countries chose to adopt the European standard for their migration, DVB-T and DVB-T2, a few others took a different path. Comoros adopted the Chinese standard (DTMB) while Botswana, Angola and Mozambique opted for the Japanese standard (ISDB-T). These choices are justified by partnerships that governments consider more interesting in terms of equipment and financial funding. However, at the regional level, the decision could isolate these three countries from their neighbours and reduce the possibilities for regional cooperation. Among these countries, only one completed its leap to terrestrial television: Botswana officially switched off its analogue signal in October 2022.

The deployment of digital television faces various challenges. First, the transition to digital is highly capital intensive and requires significant financial resources in order to deploy the necessary infrastructure and provide equipment to all households, such as antennas and set-top boxes that usually need to be imported. In Ivory Coast, around 46.5 million dollars were necessary to carry out the migration project. The larger the territory, the greater the infrastructure required. This may explain why small countries such as Malawi or Eswatini already completed the transition while it remains ongoing in the two giants of the audiovisual market, South Africa and Nigeria. Some countries such as Nigeria also face administrative barriers, which can include misapplication of the funds granted for the transition. The lack of awareness from a part of the viewers on what the migration entails constitutes an additional hurdle to the efficient completion of the process. In some cases, the objectives sought by digitization might not be tangible enough to justify the purchase of a set-top box for households, in particular when such investments aren’t subsidised.

This explains why, to meet the ITU deadline, some countries have sometimes switched off their analogue signal even before all TV households were equipped to receive terrestrial television. In Kenya, in 2015, over 1.3 million TV households lost their access to free terrestrial television after the analogue switch-off. Other countries chose not to rush. This is the case of Benin, which officially launched DTT on 17 February 2023, after building enough infrastructure to cover 96% of the population. The country also announced that it would not cut off the analogue signal until DTT is mastered and adopted by its population.

Very few countries have completed their transition
South Africa faces an important paradox: with only 20% of the population covered by DTT at the end of 2022, it cannot complete the analogue switch-off and release frequency for mobile internet development without leaving a large share of households with a blind screen. For the time being, not only have private and public broadcasters warned that a switch-off in March 2023 would cause them to lose between 50% and 70% of their viewers, but mobile operators are also falling behind in the development of 4G and 5G, as they cannot take advantage of the frequency spectrum released by DTT. Yet, MTN has a clear ambition to cover 60% of the South African population with 5G by 2025. What is at stake for the country is to succeed in responding to these two seemingly contradictory challenges, which are nonetheless inseparable from each other.

Thus, despite some achievements in the deployment of DTT, the region is still far from reaching its initial target. By 2027, the national DTT signal is expected to reach more than 90% of the population in 15 countries only, with 10 standing at 100%. This means that a proportion of countries might not succeed in their transition. This situation would be full of consequences for TV viewers, but also and most importantly for the African continent, it could represent a serious setback hindering the release of UHF spectrum and therefore the deployment of 4G mobile internet. The widespread consumption of OTT videos and channels could create as many opportunities for households, content providers and advertisers as it was expected for DTT stakeholders, provided that its adoption isn’t blocked by delayed analogue switch-offs. Without access to 4G networks, African countries would have to find other ways to provide access to the internet, turning to alternative solutions or the implementation of fixed networks. The extent to which fixed broadband projects will encounter the same issues as those raised by the development of DTT infrastructures remains to be seen. For the time being, there is every reason to believe that the increased investment in fibre infrastructures and the expected implications on the overall economies promises a better outcome.

This research highlight is based on Dataxis' data coverage of TV Distribution and Infrastructures in Africa. Please contact us to get a demo and see the depth of our service. This topic will also be adressed during our conference Nextv Series Africa.