Despite South Africa officially missing the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) deadline for the digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration, Communications Minister Faith Muthambi this week assured that there would be no broadcasting disruptions.

The nation on Wednesday missed the deadline for making the years-delayed transition from analogue to digital broadcasting before all protection on the analogue television signals were lifted, leaving television viewers open to frequency disruptions and signal interference.

However, Muthambi assured that much of the immediate risk, which would emerge from outside the country’s borders, had been minimised through several agreements and engagements with neighbouring countries.

The engagements aimed to harmonise the use of radio frequency spectrum as the countries undergo the digital migration to ensure that there would be no cross interference, with the resultant effect that June 17 would “come and go” without any major negative impact on the respective analogue television services.

Agreements of cooperation had been signed with Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, while agreements with Namibia and Zimbabwe were currently being finalised.

The digital migration project remained a “top priority” for the Department of Communications and its DTT programme management office (PMO) to release the coveted spectrum for the delivery of broadband services.

“The PMO is hard at work to ensure that set-top boxes are manufactured and delivered to complete the migration process,” Muthambi concluded.