Nigerians to Discard 40m Analogue TVs in 2015-Mba

Emeka Mba, director general, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has said that over 40 million homes in Nigeria will by June 2015 have to purchase a set-up box to enable them watch television.

This is due to the deadline for the nation’s broadcast stations to switch over to digital transmission by June 2015.

According to him, the digitisation of television will allow more room for spectrum expansion for the nation’s broadband and internet penetration.

Mba was speaking as a guest on Channels TV breakfast programme, Sunrise daily, where he revealed that about two million homes are already digitised in Nigeria right now.

Affirming that the right to watch television is a human right, the newly appointed NBC boss inferred that the set-up tool boxes that will enable owners of analogue televisions watch digital transmission will be subsidised by the federal government as it is done globally.

“Anybody that has to have a set-up box will have it” he said.

He further revealed that some new companies will be licensed to be ‘Signal Distributors’ of transmissions coming from the television stations in the country.

The Signal Distributors will soon engage in a bidding process.

Mba denied that a new national broadcaster has been licensed, explaining that the role of StarTimes with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) is a test run as dictated by the ITU that National broadcasters should lead the digitisation.

He also explained that in the next two months, the commission will launch a test-run of the digitization in phases.