By Princewill Ekwujuru

Given the significance of the fundamental human rights of Nigerians, the over 44 million Television viewers and partly Pay TV  subscribers  are by now supposed to be fully aware of the global reality that in the next 2 years their current analogue Pay TV decoder and television sets would no  longer be relevant unless they have undergone transition to the digital platform.

But all that will be a ruse, because experts have said it will not happen to decoders and television sets as insinuated in some quarters, but that analogue decoders may not be able to catch certain station on the digital platform.

Before now, Nigeria had set 2012 for its digital terrestrial TV, DDT switch over, but this was not realised as a result of the country’s shoddy preparation, thus the country is looking up to 2015.

Ahead of the date, however, and switch over, Digital Terrestrial Technology (DTT) service provider in Africa, StarTimes/NTA  launched the DVB-T2 technology, the latest modern Pay TV decoder in Nigeria.

The company at a press briefing unveiling the equipment before newsmen said the major advantages of the DVB-T2 is its ability to offer more educative, news and entertainment because it contains more channels as one frequency on DVB-T2 has the capacity for 25 channels and can be expanded further, with lagos presently having three frequencies.

With this, Nigeria has therefore joined other countries like Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania where the StarTimes introduced the technology.

Speaking,Mr. Bayo Adebayo, Senior Adviser to StarTimes, said StarTimes mission is to ensure that every home in Nigeria enjoys affordable digital entertainment backed by its collaboration with NTA, a strategic partnership that will help Nigeria in actualising its 2015 digital transition deadline. “StarTimes will leverage on the existing platform on NTA to provide quality digital service to every home in Nigeria,” he said.

He said that having StarTimes DVB-T2 decoder with up to 75 channels of great sport, music, movies, news and lots more is a vision coming to reality, as Nigerians can now confidently migrate into digital space with StarTimes as it provides them with the latest technology in DTT operation that can give up to 75 channels and quality digital entertainment.

For customers who have the old technology, Adebayo said customers who recharge for two months can have access to the new technology.