Dzonga Council to be announced

Minister of Communications Siphiwe Nyanda will today announce the members of the Digital Dzonga Advisory Council.

The council will advise Nyanda on, and oversee the process of, South Africa's migration from analogue to digital television.

The new council consists of 15 representatives from every sector of the information and communications technology industry.

In 2008, the council was established to oversee and co-ordinate the country's preparation for the full switch-over to digital television by November next year.

In June, the trade union Solidarity warned that the government's indecision about the technology to be used for the digital migration would lead to further costly delays to the process.

Solidarity argued that local information technology companies that had already begun to develop decoders - or set-top boxes - for the switch-over "could suffer huge losses". According to the deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), all countries should have completed the digital migration by 2015.

In terms of South Africa's original plan, South Africans would have been able to start buying decoders in April this year. The analogue signal would be discontinued in November 2011.

Earlier this month, Nyanda, said that the switch-over would be delayed because of a review of the technical standards.

''Though South Africa's migration plan was already well under way, the Japanese standard (ISDB-T) will possibly now be used instead of the European standard,'' said Solidarity spokesman Jaco Kleynhans.

"This indecision is an unnecessary waste of valuable time and money,'' Kleynhans said.

Local broadcasters have warned that the decoders for the Japanese standard could cost consumers as much as double the cost of decoders for the European standard.