As the deadline for International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to migrate to the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) approaches, SkyeVine, a data broadband services operator for sub-Saharan broadcasters, and Intelsat, a satellite services provider, are ensuring that TV viewers in Africa are not left behind.
SkyeVine broadband platform will be converged with Intelsat New Dawn’s Free-to-Air DTH (Direct to Home) to offer voice, video and data (three play bundle) to TV viewers in South Africa.
According to a report, Intelsat New Dawn DTH platform will bring affordable and high-definition programming in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa.
The DTH platform uses premium, non-pre-emptible capacity and multiplexing technology through DVB-S2 MPEG-4 encoding to allow free multiple TV channel view.
The fully integrated service comprise space segment, uplink chain, multiplexing and encoding, standards conversion and hosting specifically designed for FTA (free-to-air ) and pay TV programmers, state broadcasters and international programmers across the continent.
The platform, which is good for regional broadcasters, is already under use in South Africa, Nigeria, Angola and Ivory Coast.
Fibre networks will be laid to broadcasters, news agencies and production houses. In South Africa, Globecast South Africa Teleport facilities are used.
According to Anton Kotze, Managing Executive for SkyeVine, affordable prepaid Internet will be made available for consumers and businesses. The firm promises that the internet service accommodate data, voice and video traffic and are high performance bandwidth, quick deployment and relocation, no cable theft.
Users of the service will have attractive billing options like monthly Gigabyte bundles with top-up option, discounts according to time of day and no fixed-term contracts.
Kotze says the Intelsat New Dawn Newtec triple play infrastructure has doubled its capacity.
“We have also fully integrated operating and billing systems to allow African ISPs to rapidly deploy up to four megabits per second of premium, unshaped Internet services to customers, eliminating the need for these customers to develop their own management systems,” Kotze said.
SkyeVine says its Internet Gateway is hosted on a world-class tier 4 facility and its convergence with Intelsat New Dawn enables high definition DTH broadcasting, Voice over IP and Internet access to sub-1 metre dishes throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Kotze says in the statement, “The fully redundant fiber access to the Internet breakout point in South Africa, we have made quality Internet access much more affordable”.
He adds that both the Intelsat New Dawn and SkyeVine platforms are designed to allow broadcasters and ISPs to seamlessly converge the offerings of both platforms, enabling all services to be received using a single antenna.
Intelsat’s satellite, teleport and fiber infrastructure is unmatched in the industry, setting the standard for transmissions of video, data and voice services.
