A new open access platform is launching in SA, after Sentech said it would rebrand Vivid as Freevision, which will be open to all digital terrestrial providers for no additional cost.
Sentech says it has rebranded its satellite platform, Vivid, and will shortly announce a new channel line-up, as well as the retail price of the set-top box required to receive the signal. The move is expected to bolster the entry of new players in the sector and comes in the midst of OpenView HD's pending launch in October.
It is seen as a bid by Sentech to get back to its core competence of signal distribution, after it had previously been burnt in the commercial Internet service provider space, and taken plans to roll out a national wireless network off the table.
OpenView plans to offer South Africans free satellite programming as long as they buy a dish and a decoder, which will cost less than R2 000.
Currently, Vivid has about 60 000 subscribers.
Open to all
Freevision will be a universal access direct-to-home satellite platform service. Sentech says the launch aims to make sure Sentech's offerings are aligned with its public-service mandate and "the changing media landscape brought about by digital convergence".
Currently, there are 14.4 million households in SA, of which 74.5% have a television, but 12% of these - or 1.7 million homes - would not be able to view television, because the terrestrial network does not extend into those areas.
There are some geographically challenging parts of SA that make it commercially unviable to roll out a terrestrial network.
The rebranded offering will be made available to all licensed digital terrestrial television providers, such as etv and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, without additional cost. Sentech explains its network has been designed so that content can be sent terrestrially and over satellite without extra payment for satellite distribution.
Sentech CEO Setumo Mohapi says the company believes the "unique broadcasting signal distribution network design" makes sure it uses its publicly funded budget efficiently and ensures multichannel broadcasting signal distribution tariffs are affordable, which will encourage the entry of small, medium and micro enterprises into the television broadcasting sector.
The signals provider has also announced it will change the way it distributes content through an ambitious project that aims to put SA's television - and other offerings - onto personal devices and PCs around the country.
At a briefing earlier this year, it said it was ready to put content online and aimed to have substantial offerings lined up by the end of March next year. At the time, Mohapi said its plan was not "blue sky" and it has the infrastructure to offer broadcasters an alternative distribution mechanism.
Must do
Sentech is obliged to make sure all the stations on the first digital terrestrial multiplex are received by all South Africans. Currently, about 88% of the population is covered after the network upgrade, with the rest set to be catered for by satellite.
SA is migrating to digital television using the European DVB-T2 standard and aims to turn on the better-quality signal in what is left of 2013. Switch-on will be about a year behind when the final commercial launch should have happened, but this was beset by a court case over conditional access.
Digital television will also free up the so-called digital dividend, the white space between channels that is currently wasted. This can be used to roll out long-term evolution in more rural areas.
Freevision is located at 68.5^0E on Intelsat 20 - the largest video neighbourhood in sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 60 million viewers. As a result, most local viewers will not have to install a second dish, or move their current one.
Ovum analyst Richard Hurst says the in-fill solution shows Sentech is getting back to its "knitting", but notes that any offering's success will come down to the type of product.
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck notes that Sentech is leveraging its signal distribution skills and satellite is a significant competency for it.
Sentech previously toyed with rolling out a national wireless broadband network, but that plan failed to get going, and it has since handed back its coveted 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz spectrum while it waits for clarity from government as to what role state-owned entities will play in the broadband space.
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