AZARIA FAREEN
Community members from 10 villages in Tailevu are all smiles as they will now be able to watch the Flying Fijians in action at the Rugby World Cup on digital television platform Walesi.
Villagers and students of Natokalau, Malabe, Naveicovatu, Nasautoka, Nabouva, Wailotua 1 & 2, Nayavu, Naqia and Wailevu cheered as they were presented with a demonstration of the channels during the launch.
Ministry of Communications permanent secretary, Deborah Weiss, in launching the initiative said 95 per cent of Fijian households are covered by Walesi transmission and using UHF antenna’s with set-top boxes to receive television broadcast.
“The remaining five per cent of the community in remote and maritime areas are covered by satellite communications,” Mrs Weiss said.
“Walesi offers eight digital quality free-toair local channels for the communities across Fiji – FBC, Fiji TV, FBC Plus, MaiTV, Channel 2, FBC 2, Parliament Channel and Hope Channel,” she added.
“Today Walesi has distributed 125,920 settop boxes and it has successfully completed 347 community halls in remote and maritime areas.”
The Walesi app has more than 310,000 registered users and the new deployment covers 10 more villages.
Members of the community took advantage of the opportunity in getting hold of their own Walesi set-top box at the venue and 10 winners from each village also walked away with a 32-inch LED television, UHF antenna and Walesi set-top box.
Siliva Roko of Nasautoka Village, who describes herself as 53-years-young, said she felt like a winner on the day of the Walesi digital television launch and the draw of the prize.
“I am very excited and overjoyed especially since the whole day I had this feeling that today was my lucky day,” Mrs Roko said.
“My family doesn’t own a television set and I want to thank the Government and Walesi team for this wonderful gift which will be shared with the community members.”