After almost 5 years of operating a ‘trial’ mobile TV service in South Africa, the Multichoice owned DStv will finally get to bid on spectrum, just 5 weeks before the beginning of the world soccer cup on June 11. Applications have been invited for 8 MHz of spectrum and applications have to be in by May 7th. The tender was only put out about a week ago.
This represents something of a shambles by regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). It has dithered over these licenses for about four years, knowing that it had committed to offering mobile TV to visitors to the country for the world cup. But even as the usual suspects, DStv, the South African Broadcasting Association (SABC) and e.TV – the biggest pay TV provider, the public broadcaster and a new ten year old, free to air broadcaster ‘ line up to contest the sole license, a conspicuously black-owned Mobile TV Consortium is reaching for legal action to prevent the license being issued.
The problem here is that there are deep political divisions in South Africa and the SABC is seen as politically aligned with the African National Congress, while other parties are seeking a voice. Icasa has said that it will issue two licenses, one now, which has to go to an existing broadcaster and a second license later. It has said that both licenses will be technology agnostic, but this is of course absurd.
The only organizations that can build out a network in the network in time are DStv and SABC ‘ but neither of them could source handsets specially for the launch in time for the World Cup. So instead, existing DVB-H devices, which are, for the most part, way too expensive for locals in South Africa might be used to receive signals from the existing Multichoice DStv DVB-H network, which might be reinforced with a few extra transmitters in time to at least offer the highlights inside the main stadiums, where the games will be held.
Only the fact that these organizations have been waiting for this license for years could possibly allow them to get anything at all ready on time, and there was a rumor of DStv sourcing DVB-H handsets from ZTE going around at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It would usually take a period of 9 to 12 months to build a network which uses DVB-H. All that was possible, when 14 months ago Icasa was ready to issue its mobile TV license, but instead was convinced to delay this until after existing digital terrestrial licenses were issued, which themselves are once more held up due to heavy political intervention.
This recent license has all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt to get something done in time for the Soccer World Cup, in a deal that has already been pre-agreed with the various capable parties. It looks to us like the Multichoice DSTV transmitters will be used and that SABC and e.TV will each get channels within that set up. The handsets would be sold by the local cellular operators, led by the dominant MTN and Vodacom.
The issue of how anyone makes money out of this license, given the broader issue of how to bring affordable mobile TV to an exploding, but poor, cellular marketplace, without specially built, ultra cheap devices, will remain long after the soccer world cup has come and gone. And the issue of a second license only serves to create further competition and uncertainty for each of the players.
In the meantime, as the major cities upgrade to 3G in South Africa, the potential for streaming cellular TV services sounds a lot more appealing, which will work with a wide variety of handsets and can be retrofitted by software upgrades to existing services. However it is early days for 3G there and none of the operators sees any point in flat rate, all you can eat data services, so streaming will initially only be for the rich and the Soccer tourists.
Our bet is that this mobile TV license will either fail to get issued at all, or that it will only offer minimal device shipments until well after streaming mobile video becomes established ‘ a necessity for the wider uptake of broadcast video in most other markets.
The South African government had promised mobile TV services during the FIFA World Cup but it seems the services may not be ready by June this year, when the tournament kicks off. The deadline for application is May 7 and the tournament starts on June 12.