AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 91 - (Page 11)

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They’re using a Sagem DVB-H handset and have learned a lot of important lessons about the viewing habits of mobile TV users. downloads, games, and mobile television. Although the business model is far from established, the major players in South Africa are making significant investments in the infrastructure necessary for the delivery of mobile television. MultiChoice has launched M-Mobile, a division tasked to develop mobile television. They handled the logistics of the MultiChoice and M-Net DVB-H trial which started in November 2005, with a test licence from ICASA and a clutch of field trialists in the Johannesburg/ Pretoria area. Over the last year they have extended the trials to Soweto, Cape Town and Durban and now have several thousand trialists using the Sagem DVB-H enabled handset over a network of several transmitters. Linda Vermaas says that the trials have taught MultiChoice important lessons about the effect of topography. The terrestrial network of transmitters has to be augmented with gap fillers in order to By contrast, MultiChoice have discovered that longer viewing periods are linked to specific content types, such as sports broadcasts. Interestingly, the MultiChoice trials revealed a style of viewing that seems quite unique to mobile TV: people often put the phone down and listen to the broadcast without watching it! Vodacom takes the lead As far as cellphone operators are concerned, Vodacom has taken the lead over their rivals through a partnership with Vodafone. In April 2005 Vodacom, the largest local network, partnered with Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile community to launch Vodafone live! This offers a range of global and local content, including games, ringtones, full-track music downloads, video, pictures, news and weather and location based services. Using the wildly popular animated character, Mo the Meerkat, to brand the new entertainment service, Vodacom offered both subscribers and pre-paid customers a range of Vodafone branded 2.5G and 3G handsets from Sharp, Motorola and Sony Ericsson with pre-installed integrated browsers. According to Alan Knott-Craig, the Vodacom CEO, the Vodafone Live! service “will change the way our subscribers use their cell phones in the future by bringing data to life”. To date, Vodafone live! content downloads have been dominated by ring tones and games but since December 2005 has offered a Mobile TV package for 3G handsets with 16+ channels, including live streams of Sky News, E! Entertainment, and FTV. Supersport is offered as a “near live” loop of edited highlights; while HBO mobile shows episodes of favourites such as 6ft Under and 24. Jennifer Marshall, Mobile Media Content Manager for Vodafone live! in South Africa, points out that 3G is an “intelligent pipe” for streamed and downloaded video content. The 3G handset is completely portable; it is always on; and it has a built-in sophisticated billing system. The system also allows detailed monitoring of viewer activity. Marshall notes that among the lessons they’ve already learnt from their mobile network are the importance of brands. Sky and Supersport attract a majority of users but there is also a place for ‘made-4mobile’ programming. One of the most broadcast frequencies; a scarce commodity in most countries. By contrast, 3G can provide access to the Internet; video-on-demand as well as live streaming of television channels. Most importantly 3G allows users to upload and send each other their own generated content. The area where 3G falls down is on quality and the inherent limitations of a one-to-one telecoms model of communication. 3G networks suffer from too many simultaneous connections and the quality can dramatically deteriorate. However the meteoric success of online user-generated content sites such as YouTube recently sold to Google for $16 billion are an indication that connectivity rather than quality will be a significant feature of 3G usage. Phenomonel take-up of cell phones In Africa, the promise of mobile television has another dimension. In a continent where wired connectivity is relatively low and unlikely to significantly increase, the take up of cell phones has been nothing short of phenomenal. Cell phone usage in Africa is growing almost twice as fast as any other region and jumped from 63 million users two years ago to 152 million in 2006. So far only a tiny percentage of the handsets sold on this continent have 3G capability, and to date only Mauritius, South Africa and Kenya have the 3G network infrastructure in place; but this can only increase as hand sets are upgraded; particularly if the network operators are committed to increasing the percentage of upgrade in order to capitalize on the demand for nonvoice applications such as music Alan Knott-Craig, CEO of Vodacom, believes that a mobile TV service will “change the way our subscribers use their cell phones by bringing data to life”. To date, Vodafone Live! Has been dominated by ring tones and games but earlier this year they introduced a mobile TV package for 3G handsets, offering 16+ channels, including Sky News, E! Entertainment and FTV. ‘Ten Things’, one of the most watched programmes available on the Vodacomproduced YEBO1 channel, was recently nominated for an award at the 2006 MIPCOM Mobile TV festival. achieve a seamless broadcast at a cost that Vermaas admits is a significant investment. As important, the company has also learnt more about the way that their trialists consume mobile TV. Vermaas points out that it mobile viewing competes with traditional TV but doesn’t replace it. Typically the viewers of mobile TV tend towards lots of spontaneous, impulse and random viewing. Some viewing was reportedly done during the traffic jams on the main Johannesburg-Pretoria highway. 11 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 91

Table of Contents
Mobile TV set to challenge viewing habits
Planning for the multimedia church
Is Jesus the next killer app?
Will sports on mobile TV compete with the big screen?
IBC Awards for Innovation
SA doccie scoops Emmy

AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 91