Sri Lanka launches Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting Project
Daily News: Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting Project (DTTB) was launched in Sri Lanka by Mass Media Minister Dullas Alahapperuma and by 2023, the first digital terrestrial TV Broadcasting will commence in Sri Lanka offering Sri Lankan television viewership the world’s most advanced technology.
The project to digitise Sri Lankan television broadcasting is carried out by the Ministry of Mass Media in conjunction with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and financial assistance provided by the Government of Japan to Sri Lanka.
“Over the implementation of this project, more than 40 years of the Analog Broadcasting system will be migrated to a digital broadcasting platform by enabling High Definition (HD) viewing experience for each and every Sri Lankan television viewer,” said Minister Alahapperuma.
One of the biggest advantages of this DTTB project is the ability to offer automatic early disaster warnings targeting specific areas for natural calamities such as floods, earth slip and even tsunamis.
In addition, the digitalization will benefit viewers with HD television viewing experience of all TV channels in Sri Lanka, the broadcasters will benefit with the ability to offer high quality service at a lower platform cost far all SriLankan viewers, while advertisers too would get an opportunity to market their products via television and even accept online payments.
Hence, it is planned to totally switch off the Analog Broadcasting services in the country by 2027 and then the Government will benefit by being able to utilise it by releasing part of it for non-TV broadcasting operations.
“Sri Lanka has been using analog TV for over 40 years and due to the implementation of this project 200 more TV channels will be allowed to broadcast a number of new programmes in addition to the existing television channels,” said project Director of DTTB, Prasanna Rajapaksa.
He said that home TV users that use antennas will no longer have to turn it in multiple directions to view different channels and all could be viewed with better quality without rotating them. “However viewers using old TV sets would have to purchase a ‘Set Top Box’ to migrate to Digital and plans are underway to manufacture this locally.”
The main command centre of DTTB would be from the Lotus Tower.
Director General Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka Oshada Senanayake said that while TTDB is progressing Sri Lanka is continuing its march towards embracing 5G.
He also said that during the pandemic and lockdowns and with the closure of schools and work from home concept being adopted for the first time in Sri Lanka there was a huge demand of 44% (in April 2020) for additional Spectrum and TRC provided it successfully. “We observed that the E-thaksalawa education platform, one of the first such programs in the world, attracted 6 million users per day.”
OSL take:
Sri Lanka is engaged in an aggressive development programme that has opened up many business/investment opportunities in the country’s ICT and digital infrastructure development sectors. The government of Sri Lanka is also focused on transforming the country into an e-economy by expanding the existing digital platforms. With Sri Lanka working towards positioning itself as a business hub in the South Asian region, there’s a growing business potential in Sri Lanka’s ICT and digital infrastructure development sectors.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/07012022/Z_3 |