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TVs Screening To Be Digitalized Throughout Afghanistan: Deputy MCIT

Wednesday September 16, 2015

Kabul (BNA) The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has managed to change over thirty local TV networks from analogue to digital which is a good progress in the direction of joining of Afghanistan TVs to digital networks.
Deputy MCIT for Technical Affairs Eng. Baryalai Hassain said two years ago we decided to change our TVs from analogue to digital system. One of the company known as “Oqab” was winner and started digitalization from Kabul city and thirty TVs have joined this network so far. He added technology is changing every day and offers new services. Therefore the ITU, standardization branch decided to carry out better technological activities and provide useful services to people and tasked all relevant branches to change all analogue systems to digital until 2015. With this change, all analogue frequencies will be emptied and the GSM also changes. The MCIT decided to follow, this process. Due to plenty of TVs in Afghanistan but it will require huge expenditures and is time consuming. One of our goal is our TVs should invest further on the quality and contents of their programs. First we will cover the capital Kabul and then other provinces respectively. At present five other provinces are also under coverage and their TV networks will be arranged according to digital system. Talking on the reasons why a number of TVs have not been covered yet Eng. Hassan said a number of TVs were concerned and share them with us. All their concerns were justified. We had not noticed them and sent them to relevant company who provides digital services. The company must take care of these concerns.
These companies were instructed that in case of any pause in their screening, their generators should be ready to remove this concern. Hassam went on to say with change of analogue to digital system certain advantages will be available including high quality programs as well as nationwide screening and we plan to screen at regional level because large number of our countrymen are living in other places and they should benefit also from our programs. Talking on the expenditures of digital system, Hassam said our digital system requires huge investment and so far over $45m have been invested in this process. In each province one tower and in some provinces according to its population two or three towers are required to be established to cover the whole province. Considering effective the TVs digitalization for Afghanistan and talking on this issue that whether beside this companies are there any other company interested in digitalization of TVs, Hassam said one company is common in all countries that carries out digitalization activities and this process has no big market. If two companies carrying out this process the area is divided between them. Only in India which has many states, in each one company is operating and in most countries including Afghanistan only one company is involved.
Talking on the Afghan Sat-1 Hassam said the MCIT has carried out certain works on satellite and currently this satellite is operating around the orbit of Afghanistan that will relay our screening to European countries and we plan to use Afghan Sat-1 in GSM. Afghanistan is a mountainous country and its coverage is difficult and satellite is the only mean to cover mountainous areas. Talking on the future plans of the MCIT, Hassam said our main goal is that the communication be as a means of development for other sectors. All our efforts are concentrated to provide better services to our people. We want communication be not only a means of connection but a means of growth of other branches like health, education, economy and higher studies. We will introduce technology to develop other sectors. Talking on challenges ahead of MCIT, considering insecurity as a basic challenge for all sectors particularly communication, Hassam emphasized due to insecurity, during the last thirty years, about 350 towers were destroyed across the country but we have done our best to connect our people as one of our priorities. Our other problem is shortage of professional cadres and we are working on capacity building. Lack of coordination with other sectorial departments is our other problems. Suraya Raiszada        
 

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