The cost of migrating from analogue signal to digital signal will soon drop after the government's move to remove import duty on set top converter boxes. In a budget statement read by Finance Minister Njeru Githae in parliament on 14th June, the move is aimed at making the boxes affordable for Kenyans to enable the country beat the world 2015 migration deadline.

"The entire world is targeting year 2015 as the deadline to migrate from analogue to digital television signals. To make the set top boxes which form an integral part of this migration available to Kenyans at affordable price, I propose to remove duty on the importation of these gadgets," Githae noted in the budget statement.

Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) acting director general Francis Wangusi had earlier indicated that Nairobi will be on full digital signal by December of this year. The current set top boxes recommended by the regulator are the DVB-T2 which replaced the initial DVB-T1 boxes that were being sold on the market.

A DVB-T2 set-top box costs between Sh 5,000 and Sh10,000 while a TV set with in-built digital signal convertors retails  between Sh250,000 and Sh300,000. The estimated cost of migrating from analogue to digital was high that it was feared close to 16million Kenyan households with analogue TV sets could be left without TV signal.