Nearly 600,000 poor and near-poor households have been able to enjoy high quality TV
Scope of effect in ceasing the analog TV broadcasting and switching over to digital TV in 05 centrally cities not only limited to viewers of these cities but also expanded to a whole or a part of 20 neighboring provinces.
According to the policy that wherever analog TV broadcasting was turned off then the poor and near-poor households would be supported the DVB-T2 digital TV receivers at that time. Before the analog TV completely ceasing at the first stage, the Steering Committee for the Viet Nam Scheme for Digitization of Terrestrial Television Broadcasting and the local region authorities had supported digital TV receivers for the poor and near-poor in 25 provinces and cities. Therein, the Ministry of Information and Communications has implemented support for the poor and near-poor in comply with the centrally–level, meanwhile the local region authorities supported more poor and near-poor according to the local–level standards. As yet, the total number of the poor and near-poor households by the centrally–level standards has been over 600,000. Thus, since the end of 8/2016, hundreds of thousands of poor people in Viet Nam have enjoyed many more TV channels with higher quality of image and sound than before. People could receive 26 to 70 program channels, in which 05 to 07 TV channels with high resolution – HDTV include.
As the preliminary survey result, in addition to the number of TV receivers supported to the poor and near-poor, so far, over 800,000 DVB-T2 Digital TV receiving devices (including TV receiver and integrated digital-receiving TV) have been sold to end users. This indicated that people who had been watching analog TV in these 25 cities, have actively switched to digital DVB-T2 TV by themselves.
The Office of the Steering Committee for the Scheme for Digitization of Terrestrial Television Broadcasting announced that after ceasing the analog TV broadcasting at the first stage, the TV receiving of people was practically unaffected. Amount of information that people reflected to be effected was not much and decreased after 05-07 days of the date of analog - TV-turn-off.
With the achieved results, it has been seen significant that not only the TV digitization has been completed in 05 cities of the first stage, but also in relatively large areas belong to the second stage.
Process of analog TV turn-off of the first stage
According to Decision No. 2451/QĐ-TTg dated 27/12/2011 of the Prime Minister approved the "Scheme of Digitization of Terrestrial TV Transmission and Broadcasting by 2020", prior to 31/12/2015, the central and local TV stations in the cities of Group I, including Ha Noi (former), Ho Chi Minh city, Da Nang, Can Tho and Hai Phong had completed the turn-off of all analog TV channels on transmission infrastructure and switch entirely to digital terrestrial TV channels.
During the deployment, Da Nang city has been the first city that registered to implement the terrestrial digital TV transition before the time stipulated by the Government. Accordingly, on 01/7/2015, Da Nang switched-off three analog TV channels including VTV6, VTV Danang and DRT-2. Until 1/11/2015, this city had completely switched-off all TV analog channels and became the first city of not only Viet Nam but also ASEAN successful in implementation of terrestrial digital TV transition.
For the remaining 4 cities, the Steering Committee had decided to adjust the time of completely switch-off analog TV to 1/6/2016 (and then changed to 15/8/2016 ) in order to ensure no affection to propagandizing activities of the 12th Congress of Communist Party of Viet Nam and Elections of the People's Council and National Assembly of term 2016 - 2020. Up to 15/6/2016, these cities began to stop broadcasting several analog TV channels (VTV6, H2 and VTC9 in Hanoi; VTV6, VTV9, VTC9 and HTV7 in Ho Chi Minh city; VTV6, VTV Can Tho 1, VTV Can Tho 2, VTC9 in Can Tho; Hai Phong had no TV channel which shall be switched-off in this phase).
As from 15/8/2016 24h:00, these 4 cities had officially stopped broadcasting the analog channels completely, switchover to digital TV by DVB-T2 standard, ending the first stage of the Scheme of Digitization of Terrestrial TV.
For the success of the first stage of this Scheme, the Steering Committee, Ministry of Information and Communications, Local authorities and the Broadcaster have undergone a relatively long preparation with huge workload. That was to implementing works related to the information and propaganda; constructing and encompassing the digital broadcasting and transmission infrastructure, including the establishment of new enterprises providing the transmission services, broadcasting the regional terrestrial TV; supporting the set-top-box for the poor and near poor; forming the market of equipment for receiving digital TV broadcasting; ...
Experience lessons
From the actual deployment of terrestrial TV digitization in 05 centrally run cities, in which Da Nang is the pioneering, we might draw some experiences for the next stages as following:
Dissemination of information and propaganda was determined to be the significant deciding factor in the success of this Scheme. Therefore, it is essential to define the appropriate and effective objects, forms, content and time for propaganda.
For the propaganda objects, it can be divided into two groups: local authorities at all levels and TV viewers.
Local authorities at all levels need to just be informed, propagated from the beginning of the deployment of the Scheme at the local. This ensures that local authorities understand about the policy, content, plan, schedule, measure, experience, etc. in implementation of the scheme in order to conduct, operate, make plan, distribute the resources, organize the implementation of the Scheme at the local in compliance with the policy of the Government and the Steering Committee.
Analog TV viewers are impacted direct by the Scheme so that they need to be focused on propagation before the analog switch-off in a certain period of time (about 03 to 06 months) or at the time of digital broadcasting trial. This will help the viewers get actual experiences in exceptional quantity and quality of TV channels on the digital system compared to analog system. Through the process of deploying the first stage of digitization, it showed some high efficiency methods of propaganda to the viewers: TV broadcasters displayed the notification of switch-off time on analog TV channels; setting a specialized information website about digitization (sohoatruyenhinh.vn); propagating through radio stations; leafleting to all levels even the village authorities and population groups; telephone messaging; telephone exchanges. The content of propaganda focused on the benefits of digital TV (the high quality of image and sound; more channels); the time to stop the analog broadcasting; switchover method, the digital TV receiving equipments; the instruction how to install and control the receiving equipment, ...
Supporting the digital TV receivers for the poor and near poor.
Under the Scheme, before the time of completely ceasing the analog broadcasting, the poor and near-poor households, which were using non-integrated TV, in comply with the centrally level standard shall be supported the receivers by the DVB-T2 standard. To implement this policy, the Central and local agencies have a responsibility to do many tasks such as determining the supported areas (according to the actual TV coverage); doing the statistics, aggregating the list of the poor and near poor to be supported as prescribed; selecting the contractors providing TV receivers; devolving and installing the TV receivers for the poor and near poor.
This work involved many local and central agencies, therefore the deployment process required the strong participation of the local authorities and the close and consistent coordination between Local agencies and Central agencies at all stages. Particularly the activities of devolving and installing the set-top-box for the poor and near poor households shall have the participation of authorities at the grassroots.
Market of digital TV receiver.
In the practical deployment of the first stage, particularly in Da Nang, shortly after switching off the analog TV, the market was sold out of TV receivers in a short time in many places. This caused people temporarily interrupted in the TV receiving or purchased the higher prices TV receivers. This situation occurred due to the general psychology of consumers that they only purchased the receivers when the analog TV was really switched off.
To resolve this issue, the plan and timing to switch off analog TV should be clearly defined with the consent and support of the local authorities in order to improve the efficiency of information and propaganda. The manufactures and agencies needed to actively provide the set-top-box to the market.
"Soft" switch-off implementation.
It was necessary to divide into 02 stages of switching off the analog TV broadcasting: At the first stage, some non-essential channels were switched-off. After a certain time, at the second stage, all remain channels would completely stop broadcasting. This approach would restrict the large fluctuations to the TV receiving and was also the solution to help people get acquainted with and experienced new TV technology gradually. Hence, people would actively equip suitable devices to switch the TV receiving and viewing manner.
Active arrangement and reorganization of the operation of the local broadcasting stations
When digitalizing the terrestrial TV, the TV channels only broadcast on the digital broadcasting & transmission systems of the central or region. Analog terrestrial systems of the local TV stations would be switched off; then not only that local people but also people in other areas could receive the digital TV programs by that local stations because of sharing broadcasting & transmission infrastructure. Therefore, local should actively build the plan for re-arrangement the organization and operation of its local broadcasting stations. In particular, solutions and resources should be focused on improvement of the quality of local TV programs to achieve the high competitive in new broadcasting & transmission environment and to attract many viewers.
The success of the first stage of that Scheme was an important platform for the deployment of the following stages. The most recently task would be digital TV transition in local areas of the second group at the end of this year or early next year.