Kenya’s Finance Minister yesterday announced taxes on set-top boxes have been waived.
The minister revealed this while presenting Kenya’s KSh1.45 Trillion (US$17.06 Billion) budget in Parliament.
The Broadcasting industry in Kenya has been on the forefront in pushing for the zero-rating of the gadgets to enable Kenyans migrate fast to digital TV.
With many Kenyans owning analogue TV’s, many would have become obsolete without set top boxes, once the country switches off analogue TV broadcasting, as it had announced earlier this year.
Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), the country’s industry regulator, had identified the high cost of set-top boxes and low awareness among consumers as key barriers to their uptake by consumers.
With the zero-rating, it is expected that the prices will significantly come down, and boost the digital migration.
The world through an agreement of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has set June 2015 as the deadline for countries’ migration to the digital platform — and switch off analogue transmissions.
Kenya has set the migration deadline for 2013, after failing to achieve the 2012 deadline it set last year.
The set-top boxes allow viewers to pick up digital TV signals, and convert them to analogue signals, to be used on their analogue TV sets.
