The digital terrestrial broadcasting signal went live on State-owned Sentech networks nationwide late last year, but it will not be commercially available until early this year, the Department of Communications (DoC) has confirmed.

South Africa is in the process of migrating from analogue broadcasting to the long-awaited digital terrestrial television (DTT).

The DoC’s October ‘soft launch’ in the Northern Cape was meant to be followed by a nationwide commercial launch in December, but this has been delayed – this time owing to a legal dispute between the DoC and free-to-air broadcaster e.tv, DoC spokesperson Siya Qoza said.

The awarding of a tender for five-million subsidised set-top boxes (STBs) and the subsequent manufacture and distribution were halted after e.tv launched a lawsuit against the Communications Minister Dina Pule for appointing Sentech to manage conditional access to STBs.

said in an earlier statement that it aimed to ensure the establishment of a strong and stable DTT platform.

However, Qoza said the tender, which closed in September and was to be announced before the end of 2012, would be reviewed after the legal matter had been resolved. While no date or estimated timeline was disclosed, he believed it would most likely be early to mid-2013.

South Africa’s 11.5-million television-owning households will require an STB for terrestrial broadcasting transmission signals after 2015, as the analogue broadcasting frequencies’ exclusivity, or protection, will be lifted, resulting in signal interruptions.

Sentech, which has been tasked with ensuring sufficient digital terrestrial signal coverage, is closing in on its 88% population coverage target.

The State-owned signal distributor, which has achieved 63% coverage to date, reaching about 37-million people, is upgrading its towers to enable digital broadcasting on the selected standard DVB-T2 transmitters.

Sentech aims to ensure that South Africa receives 80% coverage by March and 88% by December. The remaining 12%, deemed too difficult or uneconomical for terrestrial broadcasting, will receive the digital broadcasting signals through direct-to-home satellite signals.

The DTT process, a key part in the Presiden- tial Infrastructure Coordinating Commission’s Strategic Integrated Project 15, emerged through a 2006 agreement with the Inter-national Telecommunications Union, in terms of which South Africa, along with other Region 1 areas, committed to completing the digital migration by June 17, 2015.