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It looks like the long-awaited switch-off of South Africa’s analogue television transmitters to free up spectrum and transfer viewers to digital TV is finally going to happen.
Last week the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said that he expected the province-by-province process to start this March and be completed by the end of March 2022.
Like a number of countries in Africa, South Africa missed the original deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union for completion of the switchover process.
Given that this was meant to happen in June 2015, it’s probably no surprise that a year ago the country’s Portfolio Committee on Communications raised concerns over the slow implementation pace of the Broadcasting Digital Migration policy by the Department of Communications. A new delivery model had already been developed in 2018 in an attempt to speed up the process.
The 3,300-3,400 MHz band is with the defence ministry while a block of 25 units, or 3,400-3,425 MHz, is presently used by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).
ITU
From the earliest times, humans have dreamed of flying like birds looking down from high above, to the ground below.
Prehistoric civilizations are unlikely to have even imagined powered flight, or cameras that can record the world around us. Even 100 years ago, with flight and photography relatively common, the idea of “taking pictures” of the Earth from space was unheard of. How we view the Earth today with satellites
Today, if you ask the average person about satellites looking at the Earth, the majority will tell you about spy satellites taking pictures of secret bases. While this is still done by dedicated satellites and was indeed the precursor of modern Earth-observation (EO) satellites, now scientists prefer to view the Earth with a much wider spectrum of radio colours, far beyond the senses of any living thing.
Citizen reporter This narrative should be ignored as it was aimed at bringing instability and fear, says Icasa chairperson Keabetswe Modimoeng. Picture supplied.
This came after community members of in Umlazi, KwaMashu and Ntuzuma set fire to the recently installed 5G masts in these areas, resulting in costly damages to telecommunication infrastructure and massive disruption of communication services.
Icasa chairperson Keabetswe Modimoeng said in a statement: “This narrative should be ignored as it was aimed at bringing instability and fear. The public should only rely on scientifically-based evidence and refrain from baseless theories.”
“The authority would like to reiterate its position that the development of standards for International Mobile Telecommunication for 2020 [IMT-2020] and beyond [commercially known as 5G], is continuing a