Business Day reports that at the public hearings on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) draft regulations currently underway in Johannesburg, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and free-to-air commercial channel e.tv requested that regulator ICASA conduct a regulatory impact assessment prior to issuing any new terrestrial television licences and that such licences only be granted after the analogue signal is switched off in 2015.

In addition, e.tv suggested that pay-TV broadcaster M-Net be granted fewer DTT channels than originally planned by ICASA.

South Africa is yet to launch DTT commercially. Latest word from the Minister of Communications Dina Pule is that DTT would likely be launched in the last quarter of 2012 or before the end of the current financial year at the latest.

Meanwhile, M-Net and e.tv have been conducting successful DTT tests using the European DVB-T2 transmission standard as adopted by government in November 2010.

Source: Screen Africa