Govt. digital TV to free up spectrum space for 5G services
Sri Lanka’s government will introduce digital TV to free up spectrum space for launching 5G, top officials said.
Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratne told The Sunday Times Business in an interview recently, that the government with the Telecommunication Regulation Commission (TRC) has plans to launch digital television. “Currently, analog television is consuming spectrum space with 26 channels. We are coming up with digital TV. It will minimise the spectrum usage and free up the spectrum for 5G, and other mobile communication requirements,” he explained.
Discussions to launch digital television have been on for the past decade between various related government authorities. A loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) was in the works for this project. Mr. Weeraratna said that the government will be discussing with the Japanese government the JICA loan for this project.
JICA supports the digitalisation of terrestrial television broadcasting in Sri Lanka through technical assistance, funding, and technical cooperation, with the Ministry of Mass Media as a key partner in implementing the digital TV project.
TRC was to build 276 towers to boost mobile broadband connectivity and support the rollout of 5G, both of which are needed to help facilitate the government’s plan to expand the country’s digital economy to US$15 billion.
Meanwhile, SLT-MOBITEL, Sri Lanka’s National ICT Solutions Provider, tested 5G-Advanced (5G-A) for the first time in the country last month. The demonstration, achieved speeds of over 5 gigabits per second and used advanced ZTE radio equipment and Xiaomi 14 Ultra handsets, utilising 3CC Carrier Aggregation, Massive MIMO, and 1024QAM modulation technology.
The minister explained that the intended National Data Exchange (NDEX) will be the national backbone for a centrally implemented data exchange. Through application programming interfaces, the NDEX will communicate with other digital platforms in different departments, he added.
He also explained that the government came up with the plan to establish the Digital Economy Authority (DEA) to carry out digitalisation across all ministries as a single authority. He said that the ICTA activities will migrate to DEA and it will do policy development, and implementation about digitalisation.
He noted that the Digital Public Act was to be enforced last month but didn’t happen as the digital public authority was not established. “It will take about another six months to set up this authority. Till then we will do staffing and capacity building,” he added.
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