Africa: Analogue-to-Digital Switchover Delays and Pay TV Market Is Growing

Reprinted from http://en.sdmctech.com

Middle East & Africa 2014 special issue, which was released by Digital TV Europe recently, summarized the general trends in both Middle East and Africa. According to this issue, the African Analogue-to-Digital Switchover Delays and pay TV market is growing.

Mandated by the International Telecommunication Union, the analogue to digital switch-off is supposed to be finished on June 2015. However, the all but few sub-Saharan countries have already seeking deadline extensions since they will not be able to make their analogue to digital switch-off deadline. It seems hard to forecast when will the Analogue-to-Digital Switchover be finished in Africa right now but a recent report given by Digital TV Research said that “nearly every home will be converted by 2020.”

As to the pay TV market in Africa, with more different options are given by new lower-priced entrants, it seems very promising in the following years. While despite the growing of the pay TV market, sub-Saharan Africa’s TV market still has a long way to go. According to Ovum statistics, there were 12.5 million pay TV subscribers out of 47.2 million TV households by the end of 2013 and pay TV penetration increased from 8% in 2005 to 27% in 2013 of TV homes. The sub-Saharan Africa households are 155 million in total and 47.2 million TV households means just about 30% sub-Saharan Africa households has TV. The proportion is expected to rise just 5 in 2019, so as said before, sub-Saharan Africa’s TV market still has a long way to go.