Digital Television Introduced to Africa - Mauritius and Senegal Early Adopters

"Five years ago the idea of digital television in Africa would have seemed absurd." But, as Russell Southwood reports, new and rapidly increasing access to "proper broadband connections" means that "the major players will all soon be scrambling to offer 'triple play': a combination of voice, the internet and television over broadband."

Specifically, Southwood explains that, in December 2004, Sonatel began running trials of digital TV in Senegal over asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) "with a view to offering 'triple-play'." Six channels of content were made available to 200 trial subscribers, each of whom was given a modem and set-top box converter that enabled them to record programmes digitally and view them when convenient. The offer also included video-on-demand (VoD). Negotiations were underway to include the national broadcaster, Radiodiffusion Télévision Sénégalaise.

Mauritius is trialling in 2005, and will launch in 2006. As Maxime King of London Satellite Systems (LSS) put it at the launch announcement: "We are at the start line for digitial terrestrial TV." The short-term aim is to get 30,000 homes connected in a 2-month period, with 15 channels - a mixture of French, English and Asian - available initially. LSS will also offer internet access, VoD, and games.

With regard to triple play, Southwood reports that South Africa "is headed in that direction" by trialling VoD with 400 subscribers in September 2005. A Telkom executive noted that "We have deals with M-Net and MultiChoice in terms of content provision and aim to offer DVD-quality broadcasts and video and music-on-demand, downloaded from a content server." Billing and copyright issues are in the process of being resolved.

The vigour of this trend in Africa depends on two key issues/constraints:

• Access to copyright programming, which is particularly complicated in Africa. Southwood argues that "The second liberalisation after the Internet and telecoms must surely be a media revolution that widens the scope of media ownership. The process has started with commercial FM and community radio in West Africa but elsewhere Government remains the only one with access to the means of broadcasting..."
• Access to cheap, plentiful bandwith - broadband capacity (either by satellite or fibre). In Southwood's estimation, "Telkom South Africa's slow, soft-shoe shuffle into triple-play is probably not unconnected with its desire to cascade international fibre prices downwards as slowly as possible to reap maximum short-term, financial benefit. However without those incumbents who have monopolies on this capacity lowering it, they (and others) will find it difficult to enter this market. The same will be true for any new fibre that is built."