Africa on the Way to Global Wireless Digital Television
Tristan Daladier Engouang1, Liu Yun2
1Tristan Daladier Engouang, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.
2LIU YUN, His School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.
Manuscript received on June 04, 2013. | Revised Manuscript received on June 27, 2013. | Manuscript published on July 05, 2013. | PP: 130-135 | Volume-3 Issue-3, July 2013. | Retrieval Number: C1686073313/2013©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: The African governments and the United Nations’ project of enabling full access to information and communication technology (ICTs) to all citizens, is of the most ambitious in Africa. Thanks to advancements in the broadcasting technology, the resulting digital television has led to transform the viewer experience, offering images with far better improved resolution and quality, whereas the sound is of the best quality. From the huge data consumption in mobile telephony causing the scarcity of frequency spectrum, the International telecommunication union (ITU), required from every countries worldwide to migrate from analog to digital signal, which become mandatory because, as of today, only the techniques used in digital broadcasting are spectrum efficient, what means requiring less spectrum for the transmission of a television signal of a very higher quality, explaining why a huge parts of that spectrum is been freed up for the benefit of multiple other services such as fire, education, emergency, governments, security. The trend as on the buzz in Africa became about switching over, but because, newest television equipments requires investing enormous funds, African countries are expecting foreign companies to operate in the digital television market expanding in the whole continent. In addition to the shortest time left to meet the deadline set on June 17th, 2015 by ITU, of just two years from now, when considering that as of may 17th, 2013, number of African have not started migrating their television system from analog to digital, what explain at this stage the latency and which, is as risky as it could led Africa to rush, avoiding to fulfill proper studies, in term of coverage, and market pricing. Analyzing properly the African situation, where choosing the wireless television including Satellite and terrestrial, over the cable television appears to be wiser. Moreover, it is worth that the transition started in 2008, in Rwanda, with the opening of the Chinese company Startimes’ subsidiary, after receiving the first terrestrial digital TV operating license for pay television services.
Keywords: Digital Television, Africa, Switchover, Satellite, Terrestrial, ICT, ITU.