NBC Begins Digital Mapping Ahead of Digital Switchover

In order to forestall what happened in 2012, 2015 and 2017, when Nigeria serially missed out in its 11 years plan to switch from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has commenced the digital mapping of Nigeria, a process that will facilitate the phased switchover to digital broadcasting.

The process is said to be in line with the federal government white paper on the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting, after June 2019.

The Director General, NBC, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja recently while briefing them on the progress of the country’s digital switchover (DSO), said: “As part of acceleration of the work, we have commenced the digital mapping of Nigeria. It is a process that would help to give clarity to the entire DSO process.”

The journey towards the digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting, started in June 17, 2006, after Nigeria had signed international and regional agreements to conclude digital migration by June 17, 2012.

However, Nigeria, in 2012 missed out in the digital switchover process for lack of preparation on the part of government. A new date of June 2015 was chosen, but again Nigeria missed it for paucity of fund. Another date, June 17, 2017 was again chosen for the switchover, which the country equally missed.

Despite missing out severally on DSO, Kawu however said so much have been achieved in the entire process, even though enough cities have not been covered, till date.

According to him, “June 17, 2017, was a mere benchmark date for the digital switchover in our country. Our mission remains constant: to switch off analogue completely when we achieve up to 95 percent access to free digital television content across our country.”

Kawu said in order to speed up the process of DSO, two more states, namely Kaduna and Kwara were switched on at the end of 2017, bringing it to four, the number of states already switched on. Enugu State was switched on recently and we also switched on Osun State February 12. The plan is to switch on six more, one each from the six geo-political regions during this year, he said.

He explained that the second national signal distributor,