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Digital Television Introduced to Africa - Mauritius And Senegal Early Adopters

Russell Southwood
London

Five years ago the idea of digital television in Africa would have seemed absurd. The continent was 'sucking information through a narrow straw'.

Now two countries have announced their intention to offer digital television. Senegal seems to have been first into the game, launching a pilot at the end of last year with 200 trial subscribers. Mauritius is trialling now and will launch in 2006. South Africa is headed in that direction but is only trialling video on demand this month. Access to proper broadband connections means the major players will all soon be scrambling to offer "triple play": a combination of voice, the internet and television over broadband. Russell Southwood looks at the current constraints on the growth of the market.

The latest entrant to the market is London Satellite Systems (LSS) of Mauritius that has been working since 1998 on introducing terrestrial digital television and says it will go live in the first quarter of 2006. As Maxime King, D-G of LSS put it at the launch announcement this week:"We are at the start line for digitial terrestrial TV."

Apparently the platform is already ready, the set-top box needed has been identified and the network is currently being installed. LSS says that its tests on the platform demonstrate that it is functionally effective.

According to King:"We have already invested MR 50 million. We are going to inject another MR 20 million over the next two years." The short-term aim is to get 30,000 homes connected in two months.

LSS is putting its money on the fact that it will be able to offer image quality very close to that of DVD or satellite. It will also offer Internet access, video on demand and games. The system uses a set-box converter which will cost MR1000. For its opening offer, LSS will offer 15 channels a mixture of French, English and Asian channels but the price has not yet been fixed. A dispute is in the offing with the existing local monopoly distributor of the TNT channel, MultiCarrier (Mauritius). In the first phase, the company will not offer interactive services but will introduce things like Internet access in the second phase.

In December 2004 Sonatel started running trials of digital television over ADSL with a view to offering "triple-play". The trial was underwritten with help from Sonatel's strategic investor France Telecom and another partnership with content provider Canal Horizons. Six channels of content were made in the initial offer. Negotiations were under way to include the national broadcaster, Radiodiffusion Télévision Sénégalaise. The pilot involved 200 trial subscribers. The subscriber was given a modem and set-top box converter. The offer also included video on-demand.

As Sonatel pointed out in its early publicity for the trial, all of this allows a subscriber to become his or her own director of programming. You can record programmes digitally and view them at your convenience.

The other major market that should be joining the early adopters is South Africa but as ever things are more complicated there. Telkom made an announcement that it would trial video on-demand this month with 400 trial subscribers. Steven White, Telkom executive for Product Development told ItWeb that triple play was an obvious step in the light of developments in Europe."We have deals with M-Net and MultiChoice in terms of content provision and aim to offer DVD-quality broadcasts and video and music-on-demand, downloaded from a content server."

He says a big challenge remains as far as the billing system goes, but Telkom will work on this as the trial - which will be free for participants - progresses."We had hoped to begin the trials earlier, but obviously we are dealing with a lot of content and a large delivery system, so there have been the occasional teething problems, but the trials will certainly begin soon," he says.

"There are also a number of copyright issues that go along with a service like this that we are in the process of sorting out with the relevant content owners, as well as the matter of content branding," says White.

There are two key constraints on the growth of the digital television are access to programming and cheap access to broadband capacity (either by satellite or fibre). Access to copyright programming is complicated anywhere but in Africa particularly so. Naspers-owned DSTV has probably the largest African market share of satellite TV channels and has contracts for most of the attractive international programming. It also owns South African ISP MWeb which would be a classic candidate to be a "triple-play" service provider if Telkom did not have such a lock on access to broadband connectivity.

Elsewhere, broadcast media content remains (along with the press in some countries) a monopoly held by Government. Malawi may talk of privatising its incumbent telco but one of the buyers would have been the state-owned press company. The second liberalisation after the Internet and telecoms must surely be a media revolution that widens the scope of media ownership. The process has started with commercial FM and community radio in West Africa but elsewhere Government remains the only one with access to the means of broadcasting. The new technologies offer the opportunity for a wide range of media delivery: radio to mobiles; mobcasts; podcasts; and new digital channels for both radio and television.

This week Togo launched a new media agency called the Haute autorité de l'audiovisuel et de la communication (HAAC). It will have seven members on its ruling body, four drawn from the National Assembly and three appointed by the President. The European Union has asked the Government to revise its initial mandate to ensure its independence from the administrative authority and from political forces." This may cause readers a low, ironic chuckle but isn't this how the telecoms regulatory process started? And with as much scepticism until people started to demand that independence?

The second constraint is access to cheap, plentiful bandwidth. The three early adopters are all connected to Africa's only international fibre connection, SAT3. Indeed Telkom South Africa's slow, soft-shoe shuffle into triple-play is probably not unconnected with its desire to cascade international fibre prices downwards as slowly as possible to reap maximum short-term, financial benefit. However without those incumbents who have monopolies on this capacity lowering it, they (and others) will find it difficult to enter this market. The same will be true for any new fibre that is built.

In November of this year, delegates from around the world will gather in Tunis for the World Summit on Information Societies (WSIS) plenary. There will be much windy and unfocused rhetoric about creating "information societies". Perhaps those attending the WSIS jamboree need to address themselves to the two linked constraints on digital media. How can a wider range of citizens own and operate media, particularly broadcast media? How can Governments overcome the structural constraints that prevent their citizens (and not just themselves) from having access to cheap international bandwidth which is the cement that helps build "information societies"?

http://allafrica.com/stories/200508290096.html
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