WorldSpace data services launched in SA

WorldSpace Corporation yesterday launched its one-way Internet services in SA at the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 event.

WorldSpace launched in 1999, with a single satellite over Africa broadcasting digital audio received by palm-sized receiving antennas. Even at that time, data broadcasts were foreseen and all receivers sold have data output ports.

The Direct Media Services (DMS) is a paid-for subscription service. At a starting price of $10, owners of receiving sets or PC receiver cards can download content from a number of providers to a PC for storage and later retrieval.

The data is broadcast on the L-band at around 128kbps. The company says it has the capacity to broadcast 1MB of data a minute, or up to a gigabyte on any given day, depending on the compression technology used.

Advances in compression could also see a video-on-demand service in the future.

Current applications are entertainment, distance learning and the distribution of developmental information ranging from health news to morality tales for children.

WorldSpace provides its own software with which the content can be viewed, but the data is stored in its original format, ie HTML for Web pages or MP3 for sound files.

There is no uplink capability on the receivers, and no plans to introduce any.

"While you can`t interact with the Internet, what you can do is interact with the content," says multimedia services director Ahmed Kassam.

While the technology used is similar to that being phased in by DSTV owner Multichoice, which is adding a return path to its decoders, he says the WorldSpace system differs in both price and application.

"We are not trying to compete with the ISPs; we know the limitations of the ISPs, even in SA."

Yet he says ISPs may be important partners to WorldSpace if its data subscribers decide to upgrade to full Internet connections. However, this is not expected to be a general trend. The data broadcast is aimed at rural areas, where a return channel via telephone is not available, or prohibitively expensive.

WorldSpace says where there are two-way channels in rural African locations, these are often excruciatingly slow, and because this makes browsing slow the main application is often e-mail.

"From our perspective e-mail is certainly good, but access to information is even more relevant," says Kassam.

WorldSpace is dependent on partners to handle the billing for the service. It has only 250 staff in 18 offices around the world.

The content to be downloaded can be customised by each user through a scheduling system. Closed user groups can also be created.

Broadcast is via the AfriStar satellite, which uses three spot beams to cover East, West and Southern Africa. This makes it possible to provide each region with different content, and WorldSpace says it is already offering French, Arabic and English content to the relevant areas.

Content providers range from online publishers who are dependent on advertising revenue, to paid-for services. As such, Kassam says, each contract is negotiated individually.

"Sometimes we pay them and sometimes they pay us. It depends on the value of the content. Each case is individually assessed."

While the company is not willing to talk about the revenue it expects to generate from the service, executives are excited by the prospects.

"It has the potential to make a lot of money," says Kassam.

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