Judge delays Kenya’s digital switchover

Kenya’s High Court has delayed this week’s analogue switch-off at its main Nairobi transmitter. Justice David Majanja temporarily delayed the switch off by two weeks, to December 23rd, to allow more time for viewers to buy converter boxes, and for legal arguments to be heard.

Kenya’s main analogue transmitters were to be switched off on December 13th but according to local reports this would have left “more than half of Nairobi’s more than 2 million TV homes without TV signals”.

The report says that, as if often the case, lack of knowledge of the switchover to digital TV is the main culprit.

The complaints from the existing viewing community are considerable. According to Advanced Television, 64 per cent of the 1000 people surveyed asking that the switch-off be delayed until the middle of 2014.