No more TV for most Nairobians
Consumers Federation of Kenya secretary-general Stephen Mutoro and Infotrak managing director Angela Ambitho during the release of the Digital Migration Survey Report at the Kempinski Hotel in Nairobi Thursday. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
What you need to know:
- The study is likely to raise the alarm among consumer lobby groups and Nairobi residents with only one week left to the December 13 migration deadline.
Almost half of Nairobi households will not watch television if the government switches off analogue signals.
According to a new study conducted by Infotrak Research and Consulting Ltd, 48 per cent of Nairobi residents — mostly those earning low incomes — are not ready for the switch-over set to be effected from next Friday.
“Close to half of Nairobi households, which own television sets, are yet to acquire set-top boxes to access digital TV signals. This means they will not watch their TVs if the analogue signal is switched off,” says the study commissioned by the Consumer Federation of Kenya.
Conducted to collect and assess Kenyans’ views and preparedness on digital TV migration in Nairobi, the study established that set-top boxes, currently going for between Sh4,000 and Sh16,000, remain unaffordable to many.
On the other hand, Integrated Television Sets with in-built DVB-T2 tuners cost not less than Sh35,000.
“The current price of a set-top box is unaffordable to many. A majority (53 per cent) of the survey respondents (especially the poor) would prefer the gadgets to be priced at Sh1,000 or below,” Infotrak said it the study released yesterday.
Of the 1,000 respondents sampled from 17 constituencies in Nairobi, about 65 per cent expressed displeasure with the way the Communications Commission of Kenya and the ICT ministry have handled the migration, with a majority calling for the switch-over to be pushed to June.
A majority (58 per cent) of the survey respondents were also of the view that the third digital TV signal distribution licence should be awarded to the Media Owners Association.
The study is likely to raise the alarm among consumer lobby groups and Nairobi residents with only one week left to the December 13 migration deadline.
It also raises questions on the efforts made by the Kenyan authorities to learn from Tanzania, which went through similar challenges when the government switched analogue signals in Dar es Salaam last December.
Despite calls by consumer lobbies and other stakeholders in the broadcasting industry for the digital migration switch-over date to be postponed, the government has remained adamant.
The analogue to digital shift was conventionally agreed upon at the Radio Communication Conference held in Geneva under the sponsorship of the International Telecommunications Union in May 2006 and the global switch-over date set for June 2015.
