Africa - mobile television

South Africa: Kenya Beats Country to Cell-TV

KENYA has become the third African country to beat SA to the launch of a cellphone TV service, using technologies able to entertain millions of viewers without any degradation in network quality.

Kenya has joined Nigeria and Namibia in offering cellphone TV channels using a system yet to be licensed in SA.

Although users do not care which technology lies behind the service, they do care when calls are dropped or the picture freezes because too many people are sharing the airwaves.

Domestic pay-TV supplier MultiChoice has launched the service though its subsidiary, MultiChoice Kenya, working with cellular operator Safaricom and the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.

Safaricom subscribers can watch channels including SuperSport Update, BBC, CNN and the Cartoon Network on their cellphones in Nairobi, and it will reach Mombasa later this year.

The system uses a technology called Digital Video Broadcast -- Handheld (DVB-H), rather than the third generation (3G) cellular technologies that carry voice and data calls.

MultiChoice Kenya chairman David Waweru said Kenya was leapfrogging into the digital age by using the latest technology to give consumers the best possible viewing quality.

DVB-H is widely seen as the world's leading cellphone TV standard, using a broadcast network infrastructure and a broadcast frequency spectrum. 3G uses a cellular infrastructure and frequency, where bandwidth constraints mean the network will overload if too many users dial in simultaneously.

In Nigeria, MultiChoice and MTN tested the service in Abuja before an official launch last month. MultiChoice has also made it available in Namibia.

In SA, though, the government is holding back progress. Both MTN and Vodacom already offer cellphone TV using their cellular networks, and both are testing DVB-H with MultiChoice, which has set up 14 transmitters in a trial network.

"In SA we have continuing delays from the communications department in publishing the already long-delayed framework for digital migration policies," said Astrid Ascar, DStv mobile product manager at MultiChoice. The lack of a policy meant the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) could not issue licences so the cellular operators cannot launch commercial services.

"We are quite impressed by the speed of licensing in other countries and are unaware of any reason why it can't also be a speedy process in SA, but until the policy framework is out we can't get up and running," said Ascar. "Icasa cannot license in a policy vacuum."

Ascar said things would have to move quickly if SA was to have high-quality cellphone TV available for the Confederations Cup soccer tournament next year, an event that global soccer body Fifa would analyse to see how prepared SA was for the 2010 World Cup.