Nigeria’s failed attempt at digital migration

One implication of Nigeria’s failure to meet the June 17 deadline for migration from analogue to digital broadcasting is that the country will miss the immediate huge financial gain to the economy from the possible sale of available spectrums calculated at about $49 billion. A successful switchover to digital broadcasting is expected to create more frequency spectrums, which means more TV and radio channels for broadcasting and communication activities, which government can auction.

Equally, as a result of this failure, Nigerians will likely contend with disruptive television signals as digital signals from neighbouring countries, which are likely to achieve migration ahead of Nigeria, will interfere with analogue televisions in Nigeria. In the event of this, analogue signals will receive no protection from digital signals. And Nigeria’s viewing public will also miss the sharper picture quality with reduced ‘ghosting’ and interference, clearer audio signal and improved sound quality which experts say digital broadcasting offers.

Nigeria had in 2006 in Geneva signed to join other International Telecommunication Union (ITU) member countries for a global switchover by June 17, 2015. Regrettably, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) says the earliest date this is possible is December 2017.

We appreciate the enormity of task involved in the process of digital migration. Experts say it is indeed an “arduous” journey. For instance, it is said to have taken the United Kingdom a few attempts of about 14 years and nearly £6.4 billion to digitise broadcasting. That, however, should not be an excuse for Nigeria. We believe that Nigeria, as the largest economy in Africa, should have set the pace for the transition to digital broadcasting in the continent.

We note, sadly, that the failure of successive governments to empower the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) is partly blamed for the country’s inability to meet the June 17 deadline. For instance, it is said that the Federal Government is yet to release to the NBC the N60 billion long earmarked as the cost of the Digital Switchover (DSO) process in the country. As a result, the appropriate infrastructure and financial resources to aid to the migration process were not available.

About a month to the June deadline, Emeka Mba, director-general of the NBC, had alleged that three years into the digitisation process, there was zero allocation from the government amid myriads of other challenges, including aggregate content development, distribution and production, as well as unavailability of Set Top Boxes (STBs).

We are concerned at the rate at which government apathy or outright negligence sometimes results in huge losses to the Nigerian economy. Yet we hear about how huge sums are siphoned by government officials or wasted in irrelevant projects.

But here is a project that is expected to free up requisite frequency spectrum under the control of the NBC, which the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) can then clean up and reallocate to deserving operators for the deployment of efficient and affordable broadband services.

The country’s broadband penetration level, currently at 10 percent, is nothing but abysmal.

It is heartening that the NBC, which says it has been working actively since 2006 to put all the building blocks of the transition in place, has committed to ensuring full digital migration by December 2017.

“At the moment, Nigeria has reached about 20 percent penetration of the 26 million TV households (TVHH) in the country,” the NBC said in a statement. “We have also completed the frequency re-planning, successfully done the coordination with our neighbours and have selected a second signal distributor.”

The commission further said it had licensed a free view signals aggregator and had also selected 11 successful companies to manufacture STBs in Nigeria. It also said it had put in place an EPG/STB control system to protect the investment of the local STB manufacturers and promised to conclude the final stages of the switchover – including the acquisition and local production of the STBs, relocation of MMDS operators, buy-back of obsolete analogue transmitters and massive publicity – within 18 months. However, it hinged everything on the availability of funding.

We therefore urge government, considering that digital migration is capable of not only transforming television and broadcasting in general but also helping to bridge the digital divide, create jobs and grow our national economy, to waste no time in reaching out to the NBC with a view to sorting out the issues in order to ensure that the country does not miss the new self-imposed deadline.