Under pressure from international organizations, African countries committed in 2015 to phasing out analog television broadcasting and replacing it with digital terrestrial television (DTT).
The main reason for the migration to DTT was to free up frequencies for telecom operators.
Other expected benefits included improved image quality (compared to analog TV) and, above all, an increase in the number of channels available to viewers.
Just under 10 years after this historic decision, where do things stand today in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa?
After spending millions of dollars each to implement the technology , seven countries in West and Central Africa have now completed their migration to digital terrestrial television: Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal.
What are the benefits?
According to Lea ZOUEIN, senior analyst at DATAXIS, viewers show little interest in DTT: only 10 to 15% of households are equipped with a DTT decoder, even in countries where the analog signal has been switched off.
Satellite broadcasting and pirate broadcasting (via cable) have for many years enabled African viewers to access a multitude of international-quality channels, with highly diverse programming and superior image quality compared to analog television. The habit of taking out a paid subscription, even for a short period, is now well established. The benefits of DTT are ultimately relatively low for the majority of households.
From the point of view of increasing the number of channels available, it is not necessary to have a DTT frequency to launch a new television channel today. A "new entrant" capable of providing more relevant, better produced and therefore better funded programs can launch in a country where DTT is not deployed by relying on existing broadcasting platforms.
For their part, telecom operators are also showing little interest in using what are known in Europe as "golden frequencies," which they could claim to improve their service:
The freed-up frequencies have not been used anywhere, despite the obvious benefits this could have on internet access and data costs in most countries. As a result, internet usage is only growing slowly.
As a reminder, in Europe, the frequencies freed up by analog television were allocated to telecom operators and sold at a high price by governments: these are known as "golden frequencies." The auctioning of these frequencies to telecom operators brought in €3.6 billion for the French government, for example, and enabled the rapid development of digital technology.