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Cape Town - TV in South Africa is ready for a revolution, but new broadcast technologies have a long history of being delayed in the country despite policy intentions.
South Africa's delay in adopting cutting-edge broadcast technology can be traced back to the dawn of television.
On this day in 1949, US-based KC2XAK became the world's first UHF television station to go live on air. The broadcast was simply a rebroadcast of W2XBS which itself was founded in 1929.
Because UHF was largely untested for broadcast TV, KC2XAK was used as test bed by RCA and NBC. And following the successful test conducted from Connecticut in the US, the KC2XAK transmitter and equipment was dismantled and sold.
But South Africans had to wait over twenty years to watch telly as the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) only switched on its television signal in 1975.
Different political forces shaped South Africa in the 70s as the National Party (NP) was at the height of implementing Apartheid. Experts have blamed South Africa's late entry into the television world on the NP's fear of what kind of cultural influence the broadcast technology could have on the country. The NP would go on to use television as a propaganda tool amid growing opposition to its Apartheid regime.
Fast forward to 2014 and South Africa enjoys a liberal constitution, the protection of freedom of speech and a vastly different television landscape that has players such as satellite pay-TV provider MultiChoice and free-to-air channel e.tv.
Yet South Africa risks falling behind its global peers again with regard to the latest television technology as confusion surrounds the country's digital migration efforts and as slow internet speeds hold back greater internet TV take-up.
Technology shift
While SA has had policies in place to shift to digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcast from as far back as 2008, the implementation thereof has been hurt by delays.
In a recent State of the Nation Address, President Jacob Zuma made reference to the expansion of broadband and the country's shift to DTT.
Zuma outlined government's good intentions with regard to DTT.
"We will expand, modernise and increase the affordability of information and communications infrastructure and electronic communication services, including broadband and digital broadcasting," Zuma said.
But the unwillingness of particularly the SABC to migrate to DTT has been a significant factor in preventing local regulators in making access to the key 800MHz spectrum available. This spectrum is called the 'digital dividend' and when broadcasters migrate to DTT, the likes of the 800MHz frequency will become available to mobile networks to roll-out 4G mobile networks more rapidly.
A second issue that has hurt the local development of DTT has been the continued debate around the control of set top boxes.
The government wants encryption on the boxes, but MultiChoice has hit back, saying that encryption or control technology is unnecessary for free to air broadcasters.
"When you take this box and you put conditional access or control in there like the minister wants to do, you are making sure that even if you have a digital TV, you still need to box," Imtiaz Patel, CEO of MultiChoice told Fin24 recently.
But the department of communications, previously under the direction of Yunus Carrim (and since replaced by the department of telecommunications and postal services, under Dr Siyabonga Cwele) rejected that view saying that the policy was well-established.
South Africa now risks missing a June 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to migrate to digital broadcasting.
Missed opportunities
"Set top box control has been Cabinet policy since 2008, long before Minister Carrim was appointed in July 2013. It was Cabinet that decided on the current policy on 4 December 2013. It was not Minister Carrim's personal choice, as MultiChoice well knows. It’s an insult to suggest that other Cabinet members blindly followed Minister Carrim like sheep. MultiChoice's personal attacks on the Minister are really a sign of its desperation," the department has previously said.
While developed countries race ahead with internet broadcast offerings, SA struggles with a legacy of missed opportunities to drive TV technology and the shift may yet threaten TV as we know it.
Digital services are set to change the way people watch TV. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Online services
Internationally, internet services such as Hulu and Netflix are seeing healthy growth and people are taking more control over what they watch.
New South African offerings such as streaming services from Vidi or DStv's own on demand services may disrupt TV technology as consumers take power of when and how they would like to consume content.
Many consumers in the US, Europe and Asia are turning to online services for their TV fix. To meet growing subscriber demand, providers have ramped up offerings as well as improving payment systems.
But the inability to move on DTT means South African mobile networks have to wait longer for the desperately needed spectrum that they need to roll-out more faster 4G internet services.
Faster internet is needed for online television streaming.
In addition, Telkom's dominance of South Africa's fixed line telecoms market means few advances have been made with regard to fibre broadband services in the country.
It has only been this year that Telkom has moved to start its roll-out of fibre broadband, but this was after competition started to emerge from smaller telecom players such as Vumatel.
As a result, South Africa lags behind the rest of the world regarding broadband speeds.
According to measuring company Ookla and owner of the popular Speedtest.net web service, South Africa recorded an overall average mobile broadband download speed of 9.65mbps (megabits per second) in November, meaning the country now ranks 50th out of 111 nations.
Meanwhile, South Africa's recorded fixed line broadband speeds averaged 6.39mbps in November with the country ranking 131st out of 195 nations, according to the Ookla data.
Without the necessary movement on DTT and slow internet speeds, SA risks repeating history and falling decades behind the global internet television space yet again.
* Fin24 is part of Media24, a subsidiary of Naspers, which owns MultiChoice.
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