The National Communications Authority (NCA) has selected eight entities for the award of Terrestrial Television (DTT) Free-To-Air (FTA) Programme Channel Authorisations.
Four received channel authorisations with national coverage while the remaining four were granted channel authorisations for regional coverage.
Successful applicants have a period of 60 days to validate their Provisional Authorisations by paying the requisite Authorisation fees.
A statement issued by NCA said it has offered unsuccessful applicants the opportunity to apply for any of the regions for which no applications were received.
It explained that on January 30, 2017, the Authority received 12 applications for national coverage and four applications for regional coverage in the Ashanti, Greater Accra, Northern and Volta Regions.
According to the statement, applicants were assessed in 4 categories namely: Programming Philosophy, Legal Organisation, Technical Capabilities and Financial Capabilities.
It noted that as part of the evaluation process, applicants made documentary and oral submissions between February 15, and February 21, 2017.
4 DTT Programme Channel – National Coverage
The NCA stated that the four entities which were the four top-ranked applicants and who have been selected for the award of the DTT FTA Programme Channel Authorisations, are: the Multimedia Group, Kessben Television, Mobile Zone Limited, Notice Board Limited.
During the evaluation, Multimedia Group came first, Kessben Television second, Mobile Zone Limited placed third while Notice Board Limited were fourth.
4 DTT Programme Channel – Regional Coverage
In addition, the NCA also received only four applications for regional Authorisations and, therefore, did not have competing applicants.
As a result, they have thus been selected for the award of DTT FTA Programme Channel Authorisations with Regional coverage.
They are: Royal Image Broadcasting Limited, Ashanti; OTV Broadcasting Limited, Greater Accra; Kyirfo Multimedia Broadcasting Limited, Northern and Tony D. Company Limited, Volta.
The NCA thanked all applicants and other stakeholders for their interest in the process. Going digital would improve the country in educational development and information dissemination amongst others.
Ghana signed the Geneva 2006 (GE06) Agreement establishing the digital terrestrial broadcasting plan in the bands 174 – 230 MHz and 470 – 862 MHz at the Regional Radiocommunications Conference (RRC-06). The agreement requires signatory countries, including Ghana, to migrate from analogue television broadcasting to a digital TV platform by 17th June 2015 (UHF band) and 17th June 2020 (VHF) band.
Migration from Analogue to Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting is also expected to lead to the release of some valuable spectrum currently used for analogue television broadcasting for the provision of mobile broadband services.
Migration from Analogue to Digital Broadcasting simply refers to the process in which television services operating on analogue networks are transferred to digital-based transmission networks over a period of time in which at the end of the process, the analogue transmitters are switched off.
The good news is that when this migration takes place, one does not need to buy a new television set if one already has an analogue television.
With an existing analogue TV set, one only needs to buy an approved Set Top Box that complies with Ghana’s DTT receiver standard and has the ‘Digital Ghana’ conformance logo.
<<Print>>