SuperSport CEO Imtiaz Patel will succeed Nolo Letele as group CEO of pay-TV broadcaster MultiChoice on 1 October. Letele, who was due to retire later this year, has been named as executive chairman of MultiChoice SA. Announcing the changes on Thursday, a MultiChoice spokesman says the board had agreed on an executive chairmanship to “meet the challenges faced by the underlying entities”.
More than four years after the first mobile-TV service was introduced, only 3,2m users worldwide are paying to receive broadcasts to their handsets, according to research by international analyst firm Juniper Research. This is probably bad news for pay-TV incumbent MultiChoice and cellphone operator Vodacom, both of which have recently introduced mobile-TV products.
Episode 4 of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral, is live. In this week’s show, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones talk about the dramatic axing of communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala. We interviewed her this week about how the drama unfolded at the department. We also review the other big stories of the week, including Wananchi’s plans to deploy fibre to the home in Kenya, the “I’m been unfairly maligned” speech by Telkom’s nonexecutive chairman, Jeff Molobela, the impending collapse of pay-TV operator Super 5 Media, the launch of DStv Mobile’s streaming video service, and much more.
Pay-TV incumbent MultiChoice says its new streaming mobile TV offering is not a “stopgap” while it waits for a mobile TV licence. TechCentral broke the news this week that the company will go live with a streaming mobile TV offering at R59/month from 1 August.
Broadcaster MultiChoice is again expanding its high-definition (HD) portfolio, with plans to launch an HD movie channel on 1 October, TechCentral has learnt. The channel, to be called M-Net Movies 1 HD, will join the four HD channels MultiChoice has already launched on its DStv Premium bouquet.
Super 5 Media has just over a month left to release a product to market, before the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) may begin looking at revoking its licence. Super 5 Media was once regarded as the strongest potential competitor to incumbent MultiChoice and its DStv service. However, a TechCentral investigation has revealed the business has all but collapsed.
Super 5 Media, once one of SA’s most promising new pay-TV operators, is coming apart at the seams. TechCentral can reveal exclusively that management has gone to ground amid signs the company, once regarded as the strongest potential competitor to incumbent MultiChoice and its DStv service, is collapsing.
Pay-TV incumbent MultiChoice will unveil a streaming mobile television offering at R59/month on 1 August. DStv Mobile communications manager Maiyo Simapungula says the service is already available in a soft-launch phase. The service is not technically a broadcast, but rather is streamed over 3G compatible handsets using Vodafone Live, Vodacom’s content platform.
It’s a pity Nokia is still married to the Symbian operating system. Symbian’s outdated S40 software is the only thing…
Pay-TV competition? What pay-TV competition? Naspers-owned MultiChoice grew its SA subscriber base by 450 000 to 2,8m homes in the 2010 financial year. And it added 1,1m new subscribers in other African markets. SA consumers, it would appear, weren’t tempted to put off their purchasing decisions until after the May launch of On Digital Media’s TopTV, the first direct competitor to MultiChoice
