HARARE: Zimbabwe is importing 400,000 set-top boxes from China to boost its digital TV migration programme.
The country is among the 50-odd African nations that have failed to switch off analogue TV signals on 17 June, 2015. Zimbabwe is now installing digital transmitters to complete the digital migration by the year-end. China-based Huawei is providing the STBs
“We are currently testing the TV set-top boxes model that we want to use in this country because we want to set a certain standard, There will be tests and retests because we have had a situation in other countries in Arica that have switched to digitisation and ended up being a dumping ground of sub-standard set-top boxes,” said George Charambha, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting, according to Chronicle.
According to estimates by Dataxis Research, Pay TV subscribers in Zimbabwe will increase to 341,260 subscribers at the end of 2016. Pay- television market in Zimbabwe continues to be in its infancy and it is superseded by the strong growth of free-to-air television segment.
There are over 149,200 pay-TV subscribers in the country at the end of March 2015, says Dataxis Intelligence. DSTV and MyTV are major players in the market.
