Mozambique to launch tender for digital migration this month

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Mozambique to launch tender for digital migration this month

8:45 CAT | 27 Jun 2016

The Mozambican government intends to launch this month an international tender to select the company that will finance and implement the definitive project for digital migration.

“Right now, we are working to comply with the rules for hiring services in Mozambique. Our hope is that we will conclude the process by the end of the year”, said the chairperson of the public operator of the digital television network, TMT, Victor Mbebe.

Speaking to AIM in Beijing, during the sixth seminar on the development of digital television in Africa, Mbebe stressed that the definitive digital migration project should have already started, “but it was necessary to re-assess it”.

As part of the re-assessment, the procurement will also be finalized, he added. Asked whether the Chinese company Startimes Software Technology will participate, Mbebe said that, since this will be an international tender, Startimes “will be free to bid”.

The winning company, Mbebe continued, “will advance with the financing and implementing of the definitive project”.

This will come as a surprise to those who thought that the government already had a deal with Startimes. For, on 2 April 2014, the then Miniser of Transport and Communications, Gabriel Muthisse, and the chairperson of the Startimes board, Pang Xingxing, signed an agreement in Maputo, valued at 133 million US dollars, for implementing the second phase of a digital broadcasting system.

The agreement should have allowed the construction of 24 transmission stations and digital installations for the public broadcasters, Radio Mozambique and Mozambican Television (TVM).

At the time, Muthisse put the total cost of the migration from analog to digital systems at 300 million dollars and said that this sum was almost totally guaranteed. The money for the Startimes deal would come as a loan from the Eximbank of China – which helps explain why a Chinese company was chosen.

The contract was not put out to tender. Muthisse said the government had contacted several partners, but only specifically mentioned Japan and China. “We opted for funding from the Chinese Eximbank, and that’s why we are working with Startimes”, he explained

All countries were supposed to switch to digital systems by 2015. Muthisse stressed that the new system will be in place “so that by June 2015 we have everything ready to migrate from analog to digital”. But that deadline has been missed by a year.

Right from the start, the Startimes deal was mired in controversy. The anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), warns that “without a public tender, there is no transparency”. Now, two years later, he original Startimes arrangement has been quietly pushed aside, and there will be a public tender.

Mbebe told AIM that, despite the need to reassess the initial project, the migration from analogue to digital had never stopped, and last December a pilot project took off in Maputo. He said that transmitters have been installed in the three largest cities, Maputo, Beira e Nampula, and two others are now being set up in Quelimane and Tete.

Under its cooperation with China, TVM has received a donation of eight transmitters. Mbebe said these arrived in Maputo in March, and a Chinese technical team is expected to arrive this month to assist in their installation.

This equipment is intended for the frontier regions of Ponta do Ouro, Namaacha, Ressano Garcia, and Manica, all in Maputo province, and Milange, Mandimba, Zobue and Ulongwe, near the borders with Malawi. Mbebe believes that the pilot project will be concluded this year.

He added that a further four transmitters are still being produced, and are expected to be ready by the end of August. They will go to the cities of Xai-Xai, Inhambane, Chimoio and Lichinga. This year, Mbebe expected to have all the provincial capitals covered, plus the eight transmitters in frontier areas.

So far the pilot phase has cost about 3.5 million dollars. The cost of the definitive project will only be known once the winner of the international tender is announced.

The new deadline for Mozambique completing digital migration is December 2016, but Mbebe admitted that “from the point of view of ending analogue broadcasting this deadline will not be met” – just as the earlier deadline of 17 June 2015, set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), had also been missed.

But by December, Mbebe added, if everything goes according to plan, Mozambique will have all the pilot project transmitters fully functioning, and the international tender will have solved the financing issues. But this is only for television – there is still no date set for ending analogue broadcasting in radio.

In the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region, all countries except Angola have begun digital migration. Tanzania and Mauritius have completed the process, and South Africa is in the final stages.

The Mozambican team at the Beijing seminar also includes the head of the government press office (GABINFO), Emilia Moiane, and the chairpersons of TVM and Radio Mozambique, Jaime Cuambe and Faruco Sidique.

Source: AIM