Malawi switches to digital TV transmission: Set-top-box now K15,000

Malawi government has further reduced the price of Set Top Boxes (STBs)—hours after rolling out the digital television transmission—to enable more people have access to the gadgets.

The STB gadget has been reduced from K20,000 to K15,000. The initial price was K25,000.

Minister of Information, Tourism and Culture, Kondwani Nankhumwa said the Digital Terrestrial Transmission has come to stay and Malawi cannot afford to remain behind technologically

He therefore urged people to move towards the digital age.

Malawi officially rolled out digital terrestrial television on Wednesday, June 17 2015 in concert with the worldwide switch off of analogue television.

Through the digital transmission, government is promising more channels and better pictures from the country’s 17 television stations.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) put June 17 as the digital switchover deadline.

However, Malawi and other Malawi and other countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc started the movement from analogue to digital on December 13, 2013.

“The Set -Top Box is the only gadget that would ably help Malawians watch televisions beyond June 2015 with quality pictures.

“Digital broadcasting will be cheap, faster and productive to all Malawians apart from improving delivery of broadcasting services for both radio and television,” said Dennis Chirwa, coordinator of the project in the Information Ministry.

According to him, Malawians will have no choice apart from STB gadget that will be decoding digital signal to allow the channels to be displayed on the television set.

“More channels are available on the digital transmission with a faster response as compared to that of the analogue broadcasting,” said Chirwa.

The decoders are being sold through Malawi Postal offices.

According to him, government installed the Digital network control centre in Lilongwe and Sub control centre in Blantyre to enable television broadcasters (Content Providers) not travel long distance to submit their signal to the network.

“Malawi established the Malawi Digital Broadcast Network Limited (MDBNL) to provide signals to all television stations in the country. Currently transmitters have been installed in Mzuzu, Lilongwe, Zomba and Blantyre.

“This has given us a coverage of 55% of Malawi population. It should be noted that this percentage is quite high if we compare to the analogue penetration of 47%,” said Chirwa.

Plans are that by December 31 this year, all districts will have the digital platform.

“Digital television is about content on the platform. For television to remain competitive they need to have good content,” he emphasized.

Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :