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Tanzania: Decoders Must Broadcast for Free on Local Channels - MP |
| Source: |
Tanzania Daily News |
| Source Date: |
Sunday, April 15, 2012 |
| Focus: |
ICT for MDGs
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| Country: |
Tanzania |
| Created: |
Apr 16, 2012 |
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As Tanzania prepares to fully adopt digital television broadcast, the government is receiving calls from the people asking it to form fast a regulation that will force all the decoders to broadcast on all local TV channels for free.
The Legislator for Ubungo, Mr John Mnyika (Chadema), made the comment here on Saturday while making his contributions in a parliamentarian seminar on plans to shut down analogy TV broadcast by the end of the year.The seminar was hosted by the Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology.
"Distributors of decoders have made the situation difficult for users as local TV channels are not found in every decoder. A user has to have more than one decoder to access local channels. This should be rectified by formulating a regulation that will force them to provide access to all local TVs for free," he said.
Earlier, Mr Mohamed Ibrahim Sanya (Mji Mkongwe-CUF) also cautioned the government to scrutinize the quality and price of decoders to save members of the public from becoming victims of counterfeits.The MP noted that the amount of over 100,000/- was too much for ordinary people to afford.
Responding to the queries, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Public Relations Manager, Mr Innocent Mungi, noted that the authority was planning to soon come up with a regulation that would force decoders' distributors to accommodate all the local TV channels.
"The aim is to make sure that all free to air channels are made available in all the decoders and are accessed for free," he said.Mr Mungi noted that there were about 11 distributors around the country and much more would be installed to allow smooth undertaking of the digital broadcast.
"We are confident that our plans to shut down the analogy broadcast on December, 31 this year will be implemented and everything will move on smoothly," he said.In another development, Mr Mungi reiterated that Tanzanians need no new television sets but instead the old ones will be enabled to receive digital broadcasts through decoder's support.
Recently the Government embarked on a public awareness campaign in the run up to the migration to digital television in the East African country at the end of this year.A technical committee has also been formed with experts from the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology to oversee the undertaking.
The Ministry's Deputy Minister, Mr Charles Kitwanga, was quoted as saying: "TCRA has already started educating the people but we think that there is a need to conduct a mass campaign as majority of the people are not aware of the process".
The global deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for the world to migrate to digital television transmission (DTT) is 2015, but East African countries, including Tanzania, have set December 31, 2012 as the deadline for analogue switch off.
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Tanzania: Decoders Must Broadcast for Free on Local Channels - MP As Tanzania prepares to fully adopt digital television broadcast the government is receiving calls from the people asking it to form fast a regulation that will force all the decoders to broadcast on all local TV channels for free
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