The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will allow 30 African countries extend their digital migration beyond the original global deadline.
In the report from Daily Nation, the original deadline was June 2015 and some of the countries included in the extension are Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sudan.
The digital switchover has been raising dust across Africa especially in Kenya where the African Digital Network was recently penalized for shutting down broadcasting from its members on February 14 supposedly in protest of the digital television transmission switchover deadline.
The Kenyan director-general of the Communications Authority (CA), Francis Wangusi, had earlier stated that Kenyan television stations must migrate to digital transmission by June 2015 or they will attract sanctions. Analogue broadcasts have already been shutdown and millions of Kenyans have not been able to access information through their TV sets for more than a week. (we reported news about that here).
Wangusi states that Kenya will not seek an extension and that the CA is expected to penalise the African Digital Network, after its members went off air on 14 February, 2015.
We are unsure of the veracity of the report from Daily Nation. And, that a new timeline for the digital switchover was not made available in report only feeds initial skepticism.
At the time of this report, ITU had not released any statement regarding the development.
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