MultiChoice will release a commercial version of its IPTV solution in October.
According to MultiChoice CTO Gerdus Van Eeden, the new offering is being tested, and he adds: "So far it has gone very well."
Van Eerden says poor connectivity and high costs have limited the company's ability to target gated communities and the hospitality sector. "We are restricting it to sectors with high-speed IP networks, typically fibre," he says.
Many of the new housing developments are laying high-speed networks and broadband connections during construction, which Van Eerden says is ideal for IPTV.
According to MultiChoice, the offering is ready to go for most parts of SA. However, IPTV needs a speed of at least 10Mbps and currently the highest speed broadband solution to the home in SA is 4Mbps, through Telkom. "When fibre to the home becomes a reality, we could make it available to SA at large."
The offering will be streamed over the company's normal satellite connection to a server at a hotel or gated community, where the signal will be converted for packet transfer over the network. Users will have to buy a decoder with an Ethernet port that will then convert the data for TV viewing. "The estate will have technology to convert from satellite to IP-multicast. We will specify the technology the server room will have to have to do this."
MultiChoice says it has not finalised the costs for the new decoders. However, Van Eerden points out that the set-top box will be surprisingly cheap. "For some of the gated communities, the decoder will be provided already, but for those that don't have, the price will be under $100 (R736)."
This type of solution makes video on-demand (VOD) a reality for hotels and gated communities. However, MultiChoice says it will not provide VOD under the current offering. "The solution does allow the estate managers and hotels to decide whether to offer VOD, and we have left it up to them to manage it. For now, all we will offer is a full DSTV bouquet."
According to Van Eerden, the solution has also been built to allow interactive services for the communities and hotels.
Despite owning a licence that enables it to build networks, MultiChoice says it is not in the infrastructure game, and high-speed networks will have to be deployed before it can implement its offering.
While fibre to the home may seem a long way off, infrastructure companies, like Dark Fibre Africa, believe it may happen sooner than expected.
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