THE Digital Switch Over (DSO) is creating thousands of jobs and increasing advertising, technology transfer and industrial base, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has said.

The NBC Head of Public Affairs Unit, Mrs Maimuna Jimada, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on telephone on Friday.

She said that although only few states had so far switched over, DSO had made a significant impact on the nation’s economy. “DSO portends revolutionary advantages for the economy,” the official said.

Jimada said that much of the impact of DSO had been in the area of set-top box manufacturing. “There are set-top box distributors, retailers, installers, new channel/content owners, call centre operators and other technicians.’’

NAN reports that a set-top box contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the source signal into content in a form that is displayed on the television screen or other display devices.

Jimada told NAN that set-top box manufacturers had set up plants in various cities including Lagos, Osogbo, Calabar and Abuja, adding that they employed various categories of workers staff.

She said that signal distributors had also employed workers. “So far, four states and the Federal Capital Territory have switched over to DSO,’’ she said, listing the states as    Plateau, Kwara, Kaduna and Enugu.

She said that Osun was scheduled for DSO on Friday (Feb. 23.) “DSO is for terrestrial television, and right now there are, at least, 30 channels on the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) bouquet. All the local stations in the states that have been switched over are on the FreeTV platform.”

According to the official, when a state switches over to DSO, the state must be covered by digital signals, while all the local stations will be on the DSO (FreeTV) platform.

Jimada added that citizens of the state must have access to set-top boxes. “As far as set-top box circulation is concerned, we have enough for roll-out of the first six states. We are expecting the manufacturers to mass produce enough for the remaining states,’’ she said.

NAN reports that Nigeria transited from analogue to digital broadcasting on April 30, 2016 in Jos, when it launched the pilot phase of the Federal Government’s digital transmission project that began the digitisation process.

The Federal Government rolled out DSO in Enugu on Feb. 12 2018. NAN reports that the all states of the federation are expected to have switched over to digital broadcasting by June 30, 2019. (NAN)

– Feb.  23, 2018 @ 15:09 GMT |