FG to roll out Digital Switchover in Abuja, October, says Minister

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, says the Federal Government will roll out digital switchover in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in October.

Mohammed who gave the assurance when he featured at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja said that as part of effort to fast track digital switchover in Abuja, government had procured over 200,000 Set-top boxes that would be used for the project.

“We are still hoping to roll out in Abuja in October. There are three components to digitization :the signal distributor, the content provider and the set-top boxes .

It is that Set-top box which we easily refer to as decoder that will make you be able to receive digital broadcast in your house. So unless you have that box you cannot receive digital broadcasting. There are some televisions in Nigeria today that are already digitalised.

But less than four per cent of Nigerians own that kind of television which means 96 per cent of Nigerians will need that decoder.

The minister who said government would spend huge sum of money providing the Set-top box to make them available , recalled that during the launch of the pilot scheme of the digital switchover in Jos, government gave out free boxes to the people.