major cities are now on broadband, with
the capability of offering a number of
enhanced services on the digital platform. The government began digital
migration with Dar es Salaam on 31 December 2012, and the exercise is still going on to other regions up country. Thus,
there is every possibility that Tanzania
will meet the SADC deadline.
We are told that the new digital technologies have brought about significant
changes in the broadcasting landscape.
The changed broadcasting environment
needs to be addressed by new policies,
laws, regulations and rules.
Policies, laws and regulations governing the provision of Broadcasting
Services of the time, allowed content
service providers to own and operate
studios and transmitters for both radio
and television. The Converged Licensing
Framework (CLF) adopted by the Authority. In February 2005, the separation of
roles and functions between content
service provision and transmission facilities was made. TCRA introduced separate
licenses for content service provision, as
a standalone license and for signal distribution/transmission falling under the
Network Facilities license category.
With public information campaigns
via media that spanned for several
months, the country at last switched
that off the analogue broadcasting
system by midnight of December 2012.
Thus, 2013 woke up to a new dawn of
digital broadcasting.
It was a broad move that aimed at
revolutionizing the broadcasting industry but it never went without challenges
and criticism. Reports of inadequate dig-

ital receivers (decoders) and poor signals
were some of the complaints anticipated. The exercise began with few regions,
as a starter, before it was taken to the
whole country.



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When TV Journalist Daudi Mwangosi was murdered, it was the blogs that
first broke the news. Via mobile phones,
photos of the mutilated body were fast
posted on the web and in a very short
time everybody was sharing the images,
from Facebook pages to every other social media available.
ICT and new media in Tanzania have
been on the rise in recent years in the
country. Studies show that Tanzania is
fourth (after South Africa, Nigeria and
Kenya) in mobile phones penetration.
Mobile phones were particularly used
to reach village grassroots in the remotest parts of Tanzania during the 2010
elections. According to statistics by the
Ministry of Communication, Science &
Technology, 25.6 million mobile phones
are registered in Tanzania. A credit for
that goes to the influx of cheap cellular
phones from Asia and lower tariffs due
to increased service providers (Tanzania
has eight).
Social media (websites and blogs) in
Tanzania are not required to register or
obtain permission from state authority like in media outlets such as print
or broadcasting. Only Internet service
providers are required to register. Social
media was notably used for the first time
in the 2010 general elections when websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter were




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