The dawn of cellphone TV

M-Mobile, the Digital Satellite TV (DSTV) offshoot, this month expanded its testing pool of people who can receive some of the satellite TV channels on a cellphone to around 1 500 individuals as part of a step to test the waters for this service.

Koos Bekker, MD of Naspers, the DSTV holding company, says national signal distributor Sentech has been paid about R200 million to upgrade its network so that Digital Video Broadband - Handheld (DVB-H) can be broadcast to areas in Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban and Cape Town. For now, though, Naspers is keeping quiet on how the service will be offered, pricing and general availability.

This service is not 3G. Rather it is a broadcasting technology that uses Internet Protocol datacast whereby content is delivered in the form of data packets. A subscriber will then have a handset that is able to pick up the cellular network operator`s signals and the broadcast signals. This means the service will be available independent of the cellular network the subscriber uses. It also means that, eventually, wherever the Sentech signal can be received, then so can DVB-H.

Local TV broadcasters will have to jack up their standards and find a way to differentiate themselves from their international peers in order to remain competitive.

Paul Vecchiatto, Cape correspondent

DVB-H is similar to digital terrestrial TV, but incorporates time-slicing and forward error correcting technologies to cater for the mobile aspect allowing the signal to be received from many locations and to conserve battery power.

Satellite TV is well-known to the general public, yet it has not reached the subscriber numbers it could potentially have. According to Naspers` September 2005 interim results, the service had less than 1.2 million subscribers and described last year`s growth of 45 000 subscribers as "marginal". DSTV`s compact version, which is half the price of the standard offering, gained 22 500 subscribers.

Subscribing to satellite TV is expensive for most South Africans. A first time subscriber may have to fork out around R2 500 for a satellite dish, and the minimum charge of R500 for a basic decoder. The monthly charges are R412 for the premium service or R199 for the compact version, which has only 11 of the 55 TV channels offered.

On the other hand, a reasonable charge for a number of channels direct to a cellphone has huge growth potential.

There are more than 30 million cellular subscribers in SA and the networks want to keep growing this number for the next five years. If only 10 million people subscribe to this service over that same period at a charge of say R100 per month, it means DSTV can expect a monthly annuity income of about R1 billion.

Following on from the business case is the social impact of such a service. Priced right, the service will expose many South Africans to other TV news sources apart from the standard SABC and e.tv offerings. It will mean local TV broadcasters will have to jack up their standards and find a way to differentiate themselves from their international peers in order to remain competitive.

There will also be an impact on a number of other initiatives. For instance, Sentech is budgeting R1.2 billion to upgrade its signal distribution network for the introduction of high-definition TV. This excludes the cost to consumers of eventually having to buy set-top boxes that will be able to receive the digital signals.

Sentech has estimated that the total cost to the country of moving to terrestrial digital TV will be about R10 billion. It also suggested that government look at a way of subsidising the cost of buying the set-top boxes and the purchase of digital TV sets.

However, if the cellular network operators are to be believed, almost everybody in the country is able to afford a subscription or cellphone of some kind. If DVB-H is introduced now, it will be available to most of the population by 2010 at a reasonable rate.

People will be able to plug their cellphones into PCs, or suitable TVs, and so use these handheld devices as the set-top boxes. When they are not watching TV, they can use them to take calls. It could also mean a fall in TV licence payment compliance.

Naturally government and the regulator will have something to say about all of this, as it is a case of private enterprise doing something quicker and more efficiently than a state-owned enterprise is able to. So Naspers will probably give them the credit and then reap the financial reward.