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| Dr Mkoma |
Just a day after media owners called for a review of the
move to migrate from analogue to digital television broadcasting, the industry
regulator has maintained that it will not backtrack.
The Media Owners Association of Tanzania (MOAT) said on
Monday that the move has left many viewers in the 'dark' and appealed to the
government to allow the old system to run concurrently with digital TV
broadcasting, to enable players to fully prepare for the switchover.
"We will have a meeting in the near future where we
will discuss this matter but what I can say for now is that we do not intend to
go back to analogue," the Director General of Tanzania Communication
Regulatory Authority (TCRA), Prof John Nkoma, said.
Prof Nkoma made the remarks during a brief interview on the
sidelines of a seminar on radiation held at the TCRA's head offices in Dar es
Salaam yesterday.
The remarks by the TCRA boss echoes those made by the Deputy
Minister for Science, Communication and Technology, Mr January Makamba, who
stressed on Monday that the government would not make a U-turn on the decision.
"Industry players have been discussing the migration
during the past six years and there is no point in going back, our position is
that we will keep moving forward. "Delaying the migration will make the
process more chaotic when the global deadline of 2015 approaches," Mr
Makamba told this Daily News in a telephone interview.
He expressed concerns, however, that even though the TCRA
issued licences to three multiplex operators in 2010; only two have started
operations so far. "Between 2010 and now we had expected all the three
players to be fully operational but that has not happened," the deputy
minister said.
The Acting Executive Secretary of TCRA-Consumer Consultative
Council (TCRA-CCC), Ms Mary Shao Msuya, complained that limited multiplex
operators hinder accessibility and affordability of the technology, for the
majority of Tanzanians.
"Consumers are thus subjected to limited choices and
most of them cannot afford the prices of decoders and hence denied access to
information through TV stations," she told this paper in a recent interview.
In her views, the benefits of the much-hyped digital
broadcasting are yet to be realized as viewers are greeted with poor reception
than it was with analogue.
Media owners said some stations may be forced to
close down as advertisers are shunning the medium since most of the local
channels have been 'blocked' by the new technology.
Source: The Daily News, www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Alvar Mwakyusa in Dar es Salaam
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