Chinese Government provides grant for Digital Television Project (Linked to Record ID#70238, #72069)

Project narrative

On 5 July, 2012, Presidents Raúl Castro and China's Hu Jintao signed an agreement for the provision of digital television equipment, which was donated to Cuba in the form of 57,000 decoder boxes worth $5.25 million in June 2013 as part of the Phase I trial of Cuba's Digital Television Project. This project seeks to oversee the implementation of the Chinese standard for digital television, namely Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Transmission (数字地面多媒体广播). The reported total cost of this project was 10.5 million Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUCs). The CUC-to-USD exchange rate is 1:1. Half of the cost was covered via a Chinese Government grant of $5.25 million USD, and the other half was covered through a Chinese Government loan of $5.25 million USD loan, captured in linked Record ID#70238. Cuba began to look towards the so-called Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in 2009, and on 18 March 2013, a ceremony was held in celebration of the "Havana Development Zone," in which the initial trial phase would began in June 2013. This trial covered more than fifty neighborhoods in Havana's 16 municipalities, with some 45,000 homes involved. The Chinese decoder boxes could be obtained by residents of Havana with a payment of 7.35 Cuban pesos (approximately $0.33 at the time). In early 2014, the project was expanded to include the eastern provinces. This included Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the island, where more than 1,500 decoders were distributed in the areas with difficult reception conditions to assess the signal quality, and in Holguin province, where 1,200 decoders were distributed in eight of the 14 municipalities. In November 2015, it was estimated that 60% of all Cubans had digital television transmitters. In total, there will be 62 transmitters across the country, this includes the first 34 transmitters which were erected in 2014. It was reported that Cuban engineers have also developed a new digital television with Chinese technology, known as ATEC-HAIER. Glauco Guillén, general director of the Telecommunications Research and Development Institute (Lacetel), explained that during the implementation of the first phase of the project, difficulties arose with the duality of signals and a saturation of the radio spectrum, a condition that slows down the progress of the program. There is also dissatisfaction from the population regarding the quality of signal reception in specific places in Havana, where there are five digital TV transmitting centers, which - according to the technicians - are associated with the problems of downspouts and of the antennas. The process was predicted to take about 10 years, ending in 2021, when the analog "blackout" would occur, but in the recently concluded Forum it was pointed out that the process should extend until 2023, the year in which DTMB coverage could be guaranteed throughout the entire country. As of 2022, the project is undergoing construction.