MTN has launched a pilot broadcasting service using digital terrestrial television (DTT). The pilot, being run in Nigeria, follows the decision by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation to award the telecommunucations group’s subsidiary in the West African nation a digital broadcast licence.

The pilot is being run in the city of Jos, in Nigeria’s Plateau State, and went live on Thursday.

MTN reportedly acquired the licence for 34bn naira (about R2,7bn at the time of writing).

“Once we commence full commercial activities, the TV service will deliver an exciting bouquet of rich local and international content to Nigerians,” said MTN Nigeria CEO Ferdi Moolman in a statement.

The service is known as MTN TV.

An MTN spokesman told TechCentral that the company has two DTT multiplexers (chunks of bandwidth), which will yield about 40 channels.

“Right now, we have 17 channels available in Jos. The content line up today is made up of local Nigerian channels, but the plan is to add some international channels. However, we can’t give further details at this stage,” the spokesman said.

At the same time as receiving broadcasts through traditional broadcast infrastructure, MTN Nigeria subscribers will also be able to consume content at any time they want via a video-on-demand (VOD) service launched by the company.

MTN said it’s the first “fully converged broadcast and OTT-VOD service” that it has launched.

It is not immediately clear if MTN intends launching DTT broadcasts in any of the other 22 markets, including South Africa, in which it operates across Africa and the Middle East. — © 2016 NewsCentral Media