Africa risks failing to make the big switch from analogue to digital broadcasting by 2015, due to a shortage of funds and content. Disagreements on the technology is also likely to frustrate the process, technology executives warned last week in South Africa.

While most countries are still unsure about what transmission system to adopt, the models and costs of set-top boxes (STBs) to use, those that make a successful switch will run the risk of receiving interfering signals from their unsuccessful neighbours.

Closer home, the five East African Community member states set an ambitious target to migrate by the end of this year, but there has been little, if any, public education to prepare consumers.

(Read: Conflicts slow digital migration in EA)

Also, conflict over signal distribution and weak laws are likely to prevent East African countries from meeting the December deadline. Earlier this month, the EAC Council of Ministers warned that countries which delay in passing laws to give the migration legal backing could face court battles. The global deadline for migration to digital TV is 2015, but the EAC member states set their own deadline earlier to assess the impact before the global cut-off date.

Throughout the region, high and middle income pay-TV subscribers are the only ones currently consuming digital TV broadcasting.

“We’ve spent the past five years arguing about this box from cost to size to standard, to say nothing of other aspects. If we connect in June next year, we are lucky,” said David Hagen, deputy chair of South Africa Digital Broadcasting Association (SADIBA) while speaking at the Digital Dialogue Conference held in Johannesburg last week.

The case for East Africa is even worse; unlike in South Africa, the majority of television audiences in EAC are on free-to-air channels. The only households in East Africa that have STBs are those subscribed to pay-TV services of Multichoice’s GOtv and China’s StarTimes — these in Uganda, are less than 200,000.

This leaves Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi in a quagmire. Even then, some of these countries remain adamant that they are on course to make the December 31 2012 deadline.

“This is madness. This date was decided years ago when it was a realistic target towards even realising the ITU target. But little has happened since,” says Mr Hagen. 

First, it takes a minimum of six months to produce an STB, yet East Africa requires over 10 million STBs — Kenya alone has over four million households that would have to switch.

“The free-to-air viewer has been promised many channels, meaning that great content is the biggest incentive to migrate. If what is available on digital transmission is neither compelling nor attractive, we risk no or slow uptake,” warned Koenie Schutte, the SADIBA chair.

Uganda is now less upbeat that the country will make the switchover, come end of year.

Even as some EAC governments have promised to waive taxes on STBs, experts believe it is too little too late to beat the regional switchover deadline.  Currently in Kenya, like many other countries on the continent, one of the bottlenecks is that the Freeview coverage of the signal is not as available as the pay TV option.

By Julius Barigaba and Lillian Onyango