We’re not sure how relevant this news is on African mobile TV – Nokia, cellular operator MTN and the DMTV subsidiary of Pay TV player Multichoice are making DVB-H Mobile TV services in Nigeria free on Nokia phones. It will make the Multichoice DStv programming available for free whereas it is currently around $12.50 a month.
With around 40 million mobile phones in Nigeria it sounds promising, and then you realize that this is only for MTN subscribers, so given that it is one of four networks, that reduces the numbers to around 10 million, a quarter of those subscribers, and then only on Nokia handsets with DVB-H.
Well since Nokia only offers DVB-H on its top end N96, N97 and the N77 phones, and given that this class of phones makes up around 1% of Nigerian subscriptions, we might only be really talking about 100,000 potential customers, and then only those who live in the densely populated areas where the transmitters are, except for some investment Nokia has put into the African mobile TV effort.
MultiChoice initially launched commercial DVB-H services in Namibia, Kenya and Nigeria in 2007, using Rohde & Schwarz transmitters,
Samsung and Sagem handsets, a Thales IP Encapsulator and relying on Irdeto DRM. It would have carried some of its sport content from its pay TV service so people would have wanted it, if they could afford a device or the service charges.
Once the service went live it was only with four transmitters in Lagos, Abuja, Nairobi and Windhoek in Ghana, Kenya, Namibia and Nigeria.
But Nokia later made its own investment in this system, filling it out, so reception reached Port Harcourt and Ibadan as well and making it OMA BCAST compliant, using Nokia Siemens equipment.
By also sourcing a new Nokia Mobile TV plug in receiver the SU-33W, which sells for around $100 in Europe, it means that Nokia N79, N85, N86, N97, E75 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic devices can also all access DStv mobile. It should also work with the more basic N73. Nokia or MTN between them may well subsidize the receiver, which may make it cheaper. The one thing that Nokia has not done, which this market would be perfect for it, is to create either a really cheap handset with DVB-H or a cheap receiver. Then the resulting uptake of Nokia devices would be huge (it already is in Nigeria, but with very cheap devices), and it might have a DVB-H success on its hands.
Speaking at the signing ceremony in Lagos, Marketing Manager Multichoice Nigeria, Donald Etim said ‘Activating the Mobile TV service is easy, as subscribers only needed to buy a DVB-H enabled handset, insert their MTN SIM card and activate the service. We are confident that the DStv Mobile service will gain wide acceptance because of Nokia’s dominance in the Nigeria market’.
This is also very much an experiment for MTN and Multichoice for the far bigger pie available in South Africa, testing the effect of a free service on uptake and looking at an acceptable business model to make up for its pay TV service going out without payment. However spectrum for mobile TV there has been held up until after the digital switchover spectrum has been allocated.
The DStv Mobile service offers live matches of the World Cup, English Premier League and Spanish La Liga games live when the leagues resumes in August.