Television services in South Africa will reach almost 13.3 million homes by the end of 2018, growing 10% from current predominantly analogue penetration rates, according to Dataxis research.
During the next three years the percentage of TV households relying on terrestrial free-to-air (FTA) TV services will fall from 48.2% to 34.5% as pay-TV services delivered by satellite, digital terrestrial television (DTT) and Internet protocol television (IPTV) gather momentum.
Dataxis forecasts that by the end of 2016, 43% of TV households will need digital FTA receivers, equating to 5.4 million units, if South Africa has completed its migration to digital television transmission by then.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and e.tv are the country’s current FTA terrestrial broadcasters. However, applications for FTA TV broadcast licences have been made by Rubicon Investments, Hola Media (backed by Liquid Telecom, the pan-African telecommunications company controlled by the Econet Group), Change Network and Infinity Media (jointly owned by Essel Media, Oakbay Investments and Mabengela Investments) which controls the African News Network (ANN7).
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has already issued a pay-DTT licence to Siyaya TV, with conditional licences awarded to Close TV, Mindset TV and Kagiso TV.
Once DTT services are launched, SABC will be allocated the majority of Multiplex One for the broadcast of 17 channels. SABC will launch with five channels - namely SABC1, SABC2, SABC3, SABC News and the repeat channel SABC Encore. The remaining 15% of Multiplex One will be allocated to existing community TV channels.
The second multiplex will be split 55:45 between e.tv (with up to 11 channels) and M-Net (with up to nine channels).
Up to 55% of the third and final DTT multiplex in South Africa will be assigned to one or more commercial FTA broadcaster, with the remainder allocated to one or more commercial pay-TV provider.