With 8 million subscribers in Africa, MultiChoice is looking to build its presence across other markets in the continent. We look at the opportunities and obstacles the company faces.

MultiChoice has 5 million subscribers in South Africa, and 3 million in markets across the sub-Saharan Africa region, and it is looking to build its presence across other markets in the continent. But while MultiChoice has 8 million subscribers and a strong brand across many African markets, one of the main obstacles to growing its business is making sure households in Africa don’t illegally access content where no rights deals are in place.

“One of the issues that we have is that players like Netflix and BBC iPlayer are available to people in our markets with good but expensive Internet connections, using DNS spoofing or VPNs. They illegally gain access to content that is not cleared for our markets and also do not pay applicable local taxes in the process. That is definitely a big worry for us,” Gerdus van Eeden, CEO of broadcast technology at MultiChoice Group, says. “There is very little that can be done, but we do see a trend from content owners like studios and operators to lock this down, even though technically very difficult.”

This, however, doesn’t deter MultiChoice to start its expansion plans. The company sees countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Angola, as potentially good markets for pay-TV so it has recently launched an online service called “Africa Magic” offering African content particularly for markets outside of South Africa.

Over the Top

“[Over the Top Technology] OTT is starting to show signs of life in those markets; DTT is a developing area. A lot of the countries are on the verge of analog switchover, or have done it,” Van Eeden adds, “What we are doing is offering [Video on Demand] VoD in these markets via satellite. Using satellite to bring push VoD services is definitely a trend here in Africa and it is a trend we started last year with the launch of our ‘DStv Explora’ [Personal Video Recorder] PVR.”

MultiChoice plans to have these new connected decoders ready before the end of the year, which will allow it to offer a much larger catch up catalog to its subscribers. This, of course, is dependent on a subscriber’s Internet connection, and so the rollout could be slow initially. But OTT is an area where MultiChoice has to be present, van Eeden says. The company has been offering OTT on PCs, laptops and tablets for quite some time, but DStv Explora, which has a large push VoD component via satellite, signals plans for a stronger play in this market.

“Maybe there will be great fiber to the home connections in major African cities in five years time but there will always be large rural areas that will not be served properly by broadband,” van Eeden says. “I don’t think [fiber] will have a massive short to medium term impact. In order to offer VoD to our customers, satellite push is the major mechanism currently.”

One of the big topics at trade shows, such as IBC, has been the onset of OTT offerings and the impact that could have on traditional pay-TV operators such as MultiChoice. Van Eeden says it is quite difficult to assess the potential impact of OTT across Africa but believes the transition will be much slower than in other markets. Comparing it to the United States, Van Eeden says OTT does not seem to have had much of an impact on satellite per se but rather on pricing models — where Netflix charges $10 a month, DirecTV charges $70. This will be the big change OTT brings about.

4K

The other big talking point recently has been 4K with many satellite operators believing this technology has a strong future across a number of markets. It would seem logical that MultiChoice would be the leaders in bringing 4K in Africa once there is a demand for it. However, according to van Eeden, the company has no plans at the moment to introduce 4K. While he does not doubt that MultiChoice’s future high-end decoders will have that capability, he doesn’t know when they will be introduced. van Eeden admits that once MultiChoice has these decoders, the company will look to drive Ultra-HD in a “very modest” way. Realistically, this is likely to be at least two years away. However, van Eeden believes technology needs to develop more on the consumer side to make this more of a reality.

“The big debate around 4K is that the screens are out there, but the other package of solutions that makes 4K much better experience, such as color depth and higher frame rate, are not really there yet. The current displays on the market are really a pre-Ultra-HD-1 spec. I personally think resolution only is not going to be very attractive to our customers,” he says. “The jump from SD to HD was huge but I don’t think under normal living room viewing conditions whether they feel they need to make that upgrade to 4K simply for extra resolution. I if you can start offering smoother motion when watching sports, then that package becomes more interesting. Things still need to develop a little more on the consumer side.”

Needs for Satellite Capacity

MultiChoice works with Intelsat and Eutelsat for satellite capacity. With Intelsat, it leases more than 20 transponders making it a blue-chip customer for the satellite operator in the region. Van Eeden describes satellite as a very good platform with a strong future in Africa.

“I think a lot of people are being surprised by the longevity of satellite. I think many predicted that there would be a large downturn in satellite, and maybe that is still to come, but in our markets, satellite is vibrant,” he says. “My guess is that we are now at the peak of the satellite market — but I might be surprised.”

While the company remains a strong performer across the media landscape in Africa, van Eeden admitting that the company has no plans to play in the broadband area in the short term. “Undoubtedly, satellite Internet is great on [High Throughput Satellites] HTS. The right business models needs to be found though. I doubt that [Direct to Home] DTH will be affected in a big way because of the introduction of HTS,” he added.  VS