Zimbabwe’s digital migration project has recorded a bit of progress after the first digital signal was registered recently through a site in the eastern border city of Mutare.
According to a report in the Financial Gazette, technicians made a successful live broadcast at the national broadcaster ZBC’s Pockets Hill studio in Harare using transmission set up at a remote site in Mutare, which is one of the six remote sites that have been set up to send and receive signals around the country.
The other site-related work which has been lined up as part of the project includes the construction of 24 additional remote sites around the country which are meant to complement an existing 24 sites already set up for the analogue signal. So far, 15 of the 24 new sites are reportedly under construction.
For stakeholders like the ZBC, a lot is riding on the entire digital migration project which is expected to do more than just create new stations for both radio and television while providing a platform for improved content quality.
One major expectation is the opening up of a consistent financial inflow through the adoption of a subscription-based model for all television content shown on ZBC. This will allow the national broadcaster to generate revenue from subscribers who have, in the past, refused to pay for content under the existing annual licence system.
Viewers will be expected to pay a monthly subscription of between $3 and $5 in addition to securing a new set-top box priced at a subsidised price of $25, which will become a pre-requisite for digital transmission.
Despite the celebrations that have marked this first digital signal the entire digital migration project still has a lot of deliverables that need to be met before the country can sign off on it as a complete success.
So far they have been project delays that have been blamed on the release of funding, as well as challenges with securing the right amount of content that will be broadcast on the new channels.
These hurdles have cultivated an element of doubt that will, for the sake of stakeholders like the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe and Transmedia, be dismissed by more milestones like this first digital signal.
6 comments
They were not technicians but graduate tranee engineers. The digital signal is of two forms being transmitted Dvb T2 which is available in a 60km radius around mutare, nyanga susamoya kamativi kenmaur and Harare. The second is Dvb S2 that’s available all over zim and aslong as u have a dvbs2 set top box and a parabolic antennae u can receive it. Get ur facts right please
” They were not technicians but graduate tranee engineers”
Zimbabweans please. They are workers full stop.
@Second Order Susceptibility Tensor thanks for the additional information.
…….And the other thing, The broadcast was not received in Mutare alone, but was received in all the areas where the dvbt2 transmitters are installed. While ZBC has been a major player in the broadcast industry please refrain from miss-informing members of the public when ever a development happens in the broadcast industry you associate it with ZBC. When we talk about Digital Terrestrial Migration its all about Signal transmission on the air interface and the only companies directly concerned are Transmedia the signal carrier and BAZ the regulator. Zvakangofanana nekuty pese patengeswa nyama nemaveggie wotanga kupa reference ye CSC, dude really?. I gather you r a journalist and im sure you are good at what you do(putting punctuation marks where they should be n ol) but when it comes to tech issues please consult those concerned first before you taint the folks” minds with distaste all because you are going on personal crusade to discredit the ZimDigital Project so as to further watever agenda you have………SHAME ON YOU!!!!
If it’s wrong just straighten the facts. Come on guy…no need for all that.
@Second Order Susceptibility Tensor
I never said the broadcast was for Mutare only. The article refers to the broadcast that was enabled through a site in Mutare and not for the city itself.
I never misinformed the public, I pointed out that ZBC is a stakeholder, which is hardly inaccurate. The national broadcaster’s role in this project and how it is affected cannot be overlooked.
Lol the CSC analogy is rather amusing. If there are issues relating to incorrect technical information we all benefit from the clarification that everyone offers, whether it’s before or after we publish. If you have any additional information to share(as you did with the previous comment) we all enjoy that sort of clarity filtering out in the comments.
Just to be clear, though, there is no personal crusade to discredit the Digital Migration Project or to promote some underlying agenda. That applies to this article and every article we have written on the issue.