Ignorance, costs lock many out of TV signal switchover

More than half of Kenyans are yet to migrate to digital television viewing according to a new poll.

Majority are discouraged by the high cost of converter gadgets necessary to receive digital television signals while others lack the knowledge on how the migration will affect them.

A snap poll by media ratings firm GeoPoll shows that 56 per cent of Kenyans have not migrated to the digital TV signal because the gadgets are too expensive or they are simply unaware of what to do.

GeoPoll conducted an SMS survey on 400 Kenyans around the country on Monday this week, about two weeks after the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) migrated Nairobi area to the digital platform.

The results, though, indicate that most Kenyans are lagging behind because the prices of converters, popularly known as Set Top Boxes (STB), are beyond their reach.

The average cost for a free-to-air STB is currently about Sh3,000.

The alternative, which is for pay TV, could cost less but customers are tied to paying a monthly subscription fee, making it several times more expensive in the long run.

Of the 400 sampled respondents, a majority of whom were above 35, GeoPoll researchers found that 222 of them did not have access to digital signals.

“The most cited reason amongst respondents for not making the digital switch-over is that it is too expensive, followed by “don’t know how,” pollsters reported.

Nearly a third of the sampled population who currently do not have access to digital TV signals plan to switch over in about one month. However, 18 per cent of respondents say they will wait for a year to switch over.

The findings, though based on a smaller sample, could indict the government for not doing enough to educate Kenyans on what to do to migrate.

SET TOP BOXES EXPENSIVE

It also shows that the government has done little to make STBs cheaper for ordinary Kenyans.

In Nairobi, for instance, the first area to be migrated to digital TV, 81 per cent of respondents said they knew they needed STBs to access digital signals.

It is an area that covers five counties with the heaviest concentration of TV sets in Kenya.

Although 60 per cent said they already access digital signals in this area, more than half of them said they were watching TV on pay TV STBs, meaning they are actually paying more without knowing.

Three media houses — the Nation Media Group, Standard Group and Royal Media Services — announced on Monday that they will launch cheaper STBs to address this problem.

However, they are faced with the challenge of the short period given to them by the CAK to migrate to the digital platform as well as failure by the authority to allocate them enough frequencies to effectively provide digital broadcasts.

GLOBAL DEADLINE

The global deadline for migration from analogue to digital is June 2015, although governments can apply to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for an extension, if they are unable to meet the set deadline.

In Kenya, CAK started the switch on December 31, 2014 in Nairobi and it is expected to roll out the programme ahead of the deadline.

Earlier this month, Supreme Court judges Willy Mutunga (chief justice) and Mohammed Ibrahim granted orders stopping CAK from switching off the analogue frequencies of the three media houses until further notice.

They were allocated 21 frequencies but need at least 54 to fully cover the entire country.

The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), through its affiliate Signet Kenya Ltd, has been allocated 56 frequencies, while a Chinese firm, Pan African Network Group Kenya Ltd, has been allocated 120 frequencies nationally.

GeoPoll says it conducted the survey to enable it to better understand the attitudes of Kenyans towards the digital switch-over.