The South African regulator has opened up the bidding for two DVB-H multiplex licenses around its biggest conurbations – Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town ‘ with a combined population of around 13 million, and with around 85% mobile penetration ‘ and the prospect of later opening up the entire country.
The move will come as huge sigh of relief for the DVB-H community which has had very few successes over the past 12 months, and suffered setbacks with service launch delays, while in Germany operators are pushing DVB-T chips in handsets, in competition with DVB-H
Bidders in South Africa will almost certainly have to build the network in time for the Confederation soccer cup in 2009 and or the FIFA Soccer World Cup during 2010, as the bidding document specifically requires that coverage in all of the stadium involved in these contests is listed.
The spectrum will only be made available to companies that already run existing broadcast services or operate broadcast networks directly, and the bidding is steered towards both types of organization being involved. If any company applies purely from the broadcasting side it must provide details of its agreements with an electronic communications network service. The opposite is also true, and if a network operator wants to apply for the license it must provide evidence that it has a broadcasting license or will partner with a company that has one, which also has access to content.
Effectively the bidding process is attempting to deliberately tie down the relationships before the license is awarded. This is something that some might argue has gone wrong in several other countries and has recently, in both France and Germany, stalled the introduction of DVB-H mobile TV services. Also the regulator wants to know ahead of time what type of business model is envisioned ‘ free to air or subscription and have details on pricing.
Companies that apply for the South African licenses must also prove they are financial sustainable over the next 5 years and that they have the technical wherewithal to deliver 16 mobile channels. The arrival to two separate multiplexes means that South Africa will probably end up with one of the richest mobile TV environments in the world with two separate slices of 16 TV channels available from different suppliers. In France, Germany, Finland Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria only a single license has been allocated for one multiplex (in France another is expected later), which has meant there is little opportunity to differentiate TV bundles between the various operators, a factor in the slow acceptance of mobile TV in those countries by cellular operators.
Other companies can apply to take the license apart from existing operators but they have to prove that they have access to sufficient suitable content and that they also have partners who can run and are allowed to run transmitter networks ‘ this would leave it open for a cellular operator or group of them to bid, but they would still need clear content and broadcast network partners.
The selection of DVB-H for mobile TV in South Africa has already been mandated under a Ministerial Policy Directive. The closing date for applications is 27 February 2009.
In Jo’burg and Pretoria the channels will be in TV channels 33 and 35, in Durban in 33 and 35,and in Cape Town 28 and 32, so any national network will have to end up as a multiple frequency network, or rather multiple un-attached Single Frequency Networks. DVB-H was designed ideally to use a national footprint SFN, but most other DVB-H networks so far built have had the same constraints, although it has led to issues with power limits and a resulting impact on in-building penetration.
The applicants are being asked to provide a national roll-out plan for when more spectrum becomes available and to commit to future build out landmarks defined by the regulator.
South Africa is already the scene of the largest DVB-H trial in the world, which involves 2,000 uses in Johannesburg, Soweto, Pretoria and Cape Town run by a division of MultiChoice, a Naspers company, working with mobile providers MTN, Vodacom and Cell C. The initial technical trial began in November 2005; the second phase was an expanded trial that began in June 2006 and still continues providing roughly 11 channels and any service based on this is expected to charge a subscription fee.