Advanced Television

Ghana TV readies for digital

August 16, 2011

By Chris Forrester

Ghana’s Ministry of Communications says it is likely to switch off it analogue transmissions in 2013, two years earlier than the ITU’s target date of 2015 for global migration to digital broadcasting. However, not all of the nation’s broadcasters are keen.
One, quoted by the BBC, is Ken Ashigbey who runs Multi-TV which supplies 10 free-to-air channels, and he says the country will find the implementation of DTT expensive, and suggests the country should have instead adopted a satellite-delivered DTH solution. “If you’re not able to put in lots of transmitters, what you’re going to have happen is that some places will not be covered… Some places will not be commercially viable,” he told the BBC.

Ashigbey suggested that while satellite bandwidth is currently expensive, those prices are falling thanks to new craft being launched. “If you have DTH, you could have trained people to be installers… empowering these people. This would have been jobs for Ghanaians. We should not just create jobs for people outside to come in and take away.”

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DSO, DTH/Satellite, DTT/DSO