Thursday
December 1, 2011
December 1, 2011
Corporate News
There will be a lot of activities geared towards rollout of digital infrastructure outside Nairobi. Francis Wangusi, Acting Director-general ,CCK
Kenya has won approval from East African Community partners to remove taxes on set top boxes — the equipment that converts analogue television signals to digital ones.
The tax exemption is among a raft of policy measures aimed at making the devices affordable. It will see the cost of set top boxes —which retail at between Sh3, 000 and Sh10, 000—fall by 25 per cent in what is expected to boost their uptake as the country races to meet a regional deadline for switch-over to digital broadcasting next year.
The decision to scrap taxes on set top boxes was reached by a committee of the region’s ministers in charge of transport, communication and meteorology in Arusha two weeks ago.
This paves the way for the region’s finance ministers to scrap the 25 per cent common external tariff applicable on such items, allowing majority of the citizens to buy them ahead of planned switch over.
“The stage is now set for Kenya to move to digital television under the banner of Digital Kenya,” Information and Communications minister Samuel Poghisio told African Telecommunications Union (ITU) delegates who began their three-day digital migration and spectrum policy Summit in Nairobi yesterday. Migration to digital TV is a global project that has set 2015 as the deadline by which all broadcasters must have changed from analogue to digital platform. Apart from normal broadcasting and content generation, the project is expected to expand opportunity for digital terrestrial TV, broadcast mobile TV, commercial wireless broadband services, public protection and disaster relief.
For the African continent, a digital dividend spectrum will improve the delivery of broadband, especially in rural and areas which are expected to receive clearer TV signals.
The five countries of EAC have, however, chosen their own deadline of 2012, creating a three-year headroom to handle the aftermath of the migration.
“Kenya is ready for the 2012 deadline. In the coming months, there will be a lot of activities geared towards rollout of digital infrastructure outside Nairobi by the already operating signal distributor, KBC (Signet), so as to extend coverage to other cities.” said Mr Francis Wangusi, acting director-general at the Communications Commission of Kenya.
Kenya has been lobbying to remove custom taxes on the equipment from late 2009 when President Kibaki directed the Treasury to make them affordable but the region’s Custom Union Management Act requires consensus from all the five EAC states to do so. On Tuesday, the African delegates attending the ITU Summit cited the high cost of set top boxes as a cross-cutting hurdle that could prevent the continent from meeting the June 2015 deadline given by United Nation to complete the migration to digital platform.
“In this is part of the world where majority still struggle to raise money to buy second-hand TV sets, it will take them forever to raise more for set top boxes sold at double the TV prices,” said Mr Yomi Bolarinwa, Director General of Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission.
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