Steve Rich, managing director and vice president of SES Astra Africa, is confident that satellite costs will continue to drop, bringing further pay-TV options to the rest of the continent.
Rich said SES Astra would use Top TV, the brand owned by new pay-TV entrant On Digital Media (ODM), as a yardstick for possible entry into the sub-Saharan market.
The Astra 4A satellite covers all of sub-Saharan Africa. Instead of dealing with regulators in each country, SES Astra hopes to use ODM.
He said: “We won't be focusing on one country from a service delivery point of view, but we'll give broadcasters the opportunity to re-use the material elsewhere.
“In Africa, there are multi layers of broadcasting activity. In Europe, a broadcaster would service their country or region, and that would be the end.
"What we're seeing is that big broadcasters will start servicing smaller broadcasters," he added.
However, this model will depend on Top TV's success with lower-income consumers, an untested market that could prove more difficult than anticipated.
Top TV's bouquets range in price between R100 and R299 a month, significantly cheaper than rival Multichoice's offerings which peak at more than R500.
Rich said this would not mean inferior service and that, once economies of scale were achieved, new technologies, such as HD, would be offered at only a slight increase in price.
SES Astra, listed in Luxembourg, provides satellite technology to every major broadcaster in Eastern and Western Europe, through its extensive network of 40 satellites.
It reaches 120 million households and provides 2500 channels in the region.
Rich explained; “Our mission in Africa is to develop broadcast services on the continent and to capture broadcasters.
“In the past, broadcasters bought bandwidth and put the services together themselves. In Africa, specifically, the budgets that broadcasters have are very limited, and the small broadcasters, particularly, often don't have the resources to put together the ground facilities, play-out facilities and set-top boxes,” he said.
Source: Business Times
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