Kenya’s migration from analogue TV signals to digital signals is well on course after the gorvernment directed that the prices of converter-box decoders be reduced. Information and Communication Minister Samuel Poghisio said on Thursday that high costs of set-top boxes could slow the switch of signal from analogue.
“Decoders should be made affordable to many Kenyans because of the waive of import duty. Finance Minister in his budget stated that import duty on set-top boxes was removed,” Said Poghisio. The minister was speaking at the launch of the Go-tv decoder in Mombasa.
Finance minister Njeru Githae while reading the budget statement 2012/2013 proposed to waive import duty on importation of set-top boxes to make them affordable for consumers to enable easy digital migration.
Information industry regulator Communications Commission of Kenya has projected that the country would be at par with the rest of the world with complete migration by 2015. CCK acting Director General Francis Wangusi said that the migration which will start in phases will have Nairobi’s TV signals fully digitalized by December this year.
The cost of acquiring CCK approved DVB-T2 set top-boxes or inbuilt digital TVs has been a setback in the migration from analogue to digital. It is estimated that close to 16million Kenyan households with analogue TV sets could be left out due to the cost of migration. A set-top box costs between Ksh5,000 and Ksh10,000 while a TV set with in-built digital signal convertors retails between Sh250,000 and Sh300,000.
Chinese firm StarTimes Media last month introduced Digital TV services in Kenya with an offer on their DVB-T2 compliant decoder at Ksh. 2,999. All decoders by digital TV providers Zuku, Go-TV, DsTV and StarTimes are DVB-T2 compliant.