Investors eye Uganda's untapped digital TV market

Unnamed investors have expressed interest in introducing digital television in Uganda, an official of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) said in an interview last week.

The investors contacted the UIA and are expected to return with concrete project proposals, said John Musajjakawa, who handles investment inquiries to the UIA regarding the ICT sector.

The investors are especially interested in providing a combination of video, voice and Internet over broadband connection, he said.

South African pay television provider DSTV offers a digital service via satellite in Uganda, but it is limited to video and audio applications.

The recent interest in DTV (digital television) comes with the construction of three submarine cables, set to land on the East African coast by the end of 2009 and provide cheap bandwidth.

While the majority of African broadcasters' transmissions are based on obsolete analogue platforms, a few countries already have plans in the works for terrestrial digital television. South Africa and Senegal are involved in government-led initiatives, while a private player -- London Satellite Systems -- is introducing DTV in Mauritius.

The main advantages of DTV are a greater number of channels, better audio and video quality, and the possibility of broadcasting over mobile phones and the Internet. Digital television enables broadcasters to transmit multiple channels of programming at the same time, whereas analogue technology only permits the transmission of one channel at a time, making it more susceptible to interference and degradation of the signal.

The International Telecommunication Union has set a deadline of June 2015 for Africa and Europe to transition to digital broadcasting.