587,000 households have benefitted from StarTimes satellite project – Communication Minister

The Minister for communications Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has disclosed about 587,000 villages in Ghana have benefitted from the StarTimes free-to-air digital broadcasting platform in Ghana.

The Ministry of Communications in September launched the commencement of a nationwide ‘300 village satellite TV project’ by a Chinese company in Ghana.

The funding for the project was a grant only for the specific equipment, devices terminals or this satellite TV project.

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Speaking on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen Show, Madam Owusu-Ekuful explained that the project has benefitted a lot more Ghanaians than just the six months free viewing experience it promised.

“About 587,000 households in Ghana are experiencing free viewership across the country with about 885 public stations,” she narrated.

She further stated that the youth have been provided with adequate training on the maintenance of these devices and equipment.

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“The cost of all these training was part of the agreement we signed with the Chinese and so nobody is going to bear the cost involved.”

A lot of controversy sparked out prior to the commencement of this project even though government first signed a $95 million deal with the StarTimes to supply and install the Digital Terrestrial Television network platform for Ghana in 2012.

The bigger controversy was that the Ghana Independent Broadcasters (GIBA) claimed the implementation of this program was a plan by government to allow the Chinese company to take over the existing Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) project in the country.

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However, government stated the commencement of the StarTimes’ ‘300 village satellite TV project’ had no bearing on the development of a Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform for Ghana.