Only two months after obtaining a licence, private broadcasting company MultiChoice is ready to unveil its broadcast mobile TV offering on 23 November.
Details around pricing and availability will be revealed next week.
In early September, after many hurdles, the Independent Communications Authority of SA issued radio frequency spectrum licences for the purpose of providing mobile TV service in multiplex one to etv, with capacity of 40%, and MultiChoice, with capacity of 60%.
The two broadcasters were mandated to deliver their mobile TV offerings within 12 months of receiving their licences. Etv has yet to reveal any plans regarding its mobile TV offering.
However, this time limit has not been a major hurdle for MultiChoice, which has already invested R300 million in the experimentation of mobile broadcast technology and network infrastructure.
MultiChoice, in conjunction with Vodacom, has also already delivered a 3G-enabled mobile TV offering. However, analysts criticised the offering, saying the nature of the technology makes it expensive and of poor quality.
The new broadcasting model will eliminate these issues as it uses point-to-multipoint transmission and is not subject to the same limitations on bandwidth and quality as 3G.
Nonetheless, analysts remain sceptical of the offering's success, arguing that mobile TV has not been successful elsewhere in the world.
Doomed to fail
In the short-term, mobile TV will have little traction in the market, maintains World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.
According to the 2009 Mobility survey, conducted by World Wide Worx, less than 1% of the mobile market in SA is keen to take up mobile TV as a service.
Goldstuck argues that, in the longer term, mobile TV may become “taken for granted” as an alternative viewing platform when people are out of reach of TVs.
“But that also highlights the great flaw in mobile TV business models: it will never be a preferred viewing channel for general programming, and must always play second fiddle to a standard TV set in a home or place of entertainment,” he maintains.
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