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New DAB+ Trial Goes Live in Gauteng SA 1 June 2022
A new 8 month DAB+ trial goes live in Gauteng South Africa. The main object of this trial is to trial a cloud based mux of 20 stations sourced from different parts of the country. Two 10kW transmitters operating in a SFN will cover SA's Gauteng province.
SA Regulator ICASA Publishes Digital Sound Broadcasting Regulations 23 April 2021
ICASA's new Digital Radio Sound Broadcasting Regulations will see the introduction of Digital Radio in a phased approach starting with primary markets followed by secondary markets.Existing broadcasters will be allowed to simulcast on both analogue and digital platforms. New entrants will have to wait a period of 3 years. View the regulations and reasons document here.
SA Regulator ICASA Releases Draft Digital Sound Broadcasting Regulations 13 November 2020
SA Broadcast Regulator ICASA releases draft Digital Sound Broadcasting Regulations for public comment. Closing date for comments has been extended to 8 January 2021. View the draft regulations here.
14 WorldDAB General Assembly 3 Nov 2020 DAB+ in SA
The Chairperson of SADIBA Mr Lynn Mansfield interviews ICASA Councillor Dimakatso Qocha on ICASA's yet to be released regulations on the licencing of Digital Radio. View the video on Youtube here. https://youtu.be/Zk5tPYw9-mA
Policy Direction on the Introduction of Digital Sound Broadcasting in South Africa 10 July 2020.
The South African Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies The Hon.Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams published in the Government Gazette dated the 10th July 2020 the policy direction to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa regarding the introduction of Digital Sound Broadcasting in terms of section 3(2) of the Electronic Communications Act 2005 (Act 36 of 2005). Click to view the Policy Direction.
DAB+ Trial goes live in Cape Town South Africa 10 March 2020.
DAB+ trial goes live in CapeTown currently with 8 services. The services are The Voice of the Cape, Heart, Bush Radio, KFM, Smile 90,4, Magic 828, Radio 786 and Fine Music Radio. More services can be added. Transmission is provided by Sentech SOC from Sentech's Constantiaberg transmitter site (see pic above). Transmitter power is 2kW with an ERP of 31.7kW on channel 13F 239.200 MHz. Currently all services are running at 72kbps Stereo (8kbps reserved for future data use).
Open Sourced DAB+ Cloud based MUX demonstrated in South Africa 8 October 2019.
Open sourced Linux based software provided by Open digitalradio.org based in Switzerland was used to configure locally and demonstrate a full signal path DAB+ cloud based mux to members of the Joint SADIBA/ NAB DAB+ Work Group by one of its members Mr Frank Schultz. The main focus of this work has been to develop a low cost cloud based solution for small coverage areas and the community broadcasting sector. Read more
ICASA Findings Document and Position Paper on the use of Digital Sound Broadcasting in SA.
The Independant Communications Authority of SA published its Findings Document and Position Paper on the use of DSB in SA in the Government Gazette on the 29 March 2019. The ICASA Press Release notifying the completion process is available for download here.
This full document is available for download in two parts Part 1 and Part 2