Advanced Television

Uganda switches off all TV and radio

August 5, 2013

By Chris Forrester

August 4th saw Uganda Broadcasting Corporation switch off the public TV and radio channels as well as those privately owned. A total of 64 channels or radio stations were involved.  They will be off-air for three days while conversion work is done to the nation’s key Kololo Summit transmission tower outside Kampala.

Rose Namayanja, the information and national guidance minister, said government would stick to the planned three days to mitigate impact of the process.  “UBC has put in place a contingency arrangement to ensure uninterrupted provision of television and radio services beyond the greater Kampala areas in Uganda,” she said.

She said television services on the satellite platform would not be interrupted during the period of installation.

The digital migration exercise is a fulfilment of a July 2006 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) resolution (to which Uganda is a signatory) and requires all countries to have shifted all their television broadcasting signals from Analogue to Digital by June 2015.

Further to this, in Uganda, the policy on Analogue to Digital migration was approved by Cabinet in April 2011, providing for UBC as the sole signal distributor for at least five years.

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