Botswana has adopted Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T), as its digital terrestrial television (DTT) standard, a government official has announced.

Mokgweetsi Masisi , minister of presidential affairs and public administration, has said the decision was reached after consultations on the two leading international standards - Digital Video Broadcasting-Television second generation (DVB-T2) and Japan’s ISDB-T.

ISDB-T is a technical standard for digital television broadcast used in countries such as Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Chile and the Philippines.

Experts, though, have criticised the ISDB-T standard by claiming that it is less superior to that of the DVB-T2, which is set to be implemented in nations such as South Africa.

In 2010, Gerhard Petrick, of the Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association (SADIBA), was quoted in Broadbandtvnews.com as saying that DVB-T2 yielded 67% more payload at equivalent coverage and network cost. Petrick added that DVB-T requires a lower transmitter power and is able to deliver a 2% higher net data rate than its Japanese counterpart. Petrick further noted that DVB-T can also be deployed over larger SFN (single frequency network) areas than ISDB.

Nevertheless, Botswana’s government is upbeat about its choice.

“The adoption of the ISDB-T standard was the result of a thorough process of research and evaluation of available options, in order to determine the most appropriate DTT standard for our country as we move forward to meet our switchover target of 2015,” said Masisi.

The decision further places Botswana as one of the countries fast moving towards adopting the ‘Geneva 2006 (GE 06) Agreement’, in which nations agreed that transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting will start in 2006 and end in June 2015.