Why is it that when people talk about technology they always mention the word “frightening”? “It’s frightening how things are changing,” people say. The answer came at a presentation by a cellular phone company recently.
A chief technician showed what the latest generation of cellphones is capable of. At the click of a button, the man was able to see who his wife was entertaining in the living room of his home in Cape Town. There was uncomfortable laughter in the room. George Orwell’s book 1984 popped into mind. A journalist muttered under his breath: “Big husband is watching you.” Seeing the man smirk as his wife tucked into a piece of pizza was indeed frightening.
So what is it about the latest cellphone technology that scares us?
Not much if you are in the television broadcasting field. In fact life is about to become more exciting. Television news rooms are employing staff to read bulletins for the new phones, cellular companies are launching new television channels and technicians have been hard at work upgrading the infrastructure. Cellphones are converging with the broadcasting industry and the internet.
Vodacom and MTN are rolling out 3G HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology. Cell companies say the term HSDPA is going to become as well known as ADSL. It will be one of those acronyms that everyone knows, but no one really understands. Incidentally, 3G means third generation. The last two generations, 1G and 2G, were the primitive phones we have been using up to now.
HSDPA allows users to transfer data five times faster than 3G and faster than ADSL. Users of the technology will be able to download a 3MB file in 12 seconds. What this means is that while playing a television game against someone in Cape Town, you will be able to shoot his man dead instantly, instead of waiting two seconds to see the blood splatter.
The technology is just as great for television purposes. Journalists at the update meeting were shown a sample of a television show, using cellphone technology. A crystal clear Paris Hilton told us how wonderful life as a celebrity was. We could have been watching her on a DVD.
Vodacom Live, the cellphone company’s television branch, currently offers 16 television channels for users of 3G technology. These include Sky News, E! Entertainment, Fashion TV, TellyTrack, Uefa, HBO, Fox, Ministry of Sound, Chilli TV, Fox and the Yebo channels that provide local content. Unfortunately the service is limited to Vodacom customers who have 3G cellphones. But eventually Vodacom wants to change this.
“In two years we would want to have 70 percent of contracts on 3G phones,” chief operating officer Pieter Uys says.
Eventually users will be able to watch pay channels from anywhere in the country, without needing a satellite dish. Shows can also be watched on a big screen at home by setting up a BlueTooth connection between the cellphone and a television. The cost for the service ranges from R69 a month for the standard channels, with an extra R10 a day for an added specific channel. Uys says Vodacom Live has proved popular in polls, with some 70% of the company’s subscribers saying they would be willing to pay for television channels on their cellphones.
Rumour has it that Vodacom has been negotiating with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to secure the licences it needs to compete in the pay television market. Sceptics would say the appointments to Vodacom of former ICASA chairman Mandla Langa and SABC chief Peter Matlare might have something to do with its ambitions in the mobile television content market. Langa would no doubt have valuable knowledge about the decision making processes at his former office in Sandton.
If Vodacom is granted the licences, it could break MultiChoice’s monopoly on pay-TV, and begin producing local content. MultiChoice has been operating DStv without a licence for nearly ten years. It broadcasts 55 channels in more than 50 countries and has 2.4-million subscribers. “In the end you will have people that distribute content and content providers such as the SABC, ETV and overseas markets,” Uys says.
Uys says the problem at the moment is that when too many 3G HSDPA subscribers use the service, performance drops. South Africa, he says, will have to build a new broadcasting network if the whole country is to have access to mobile phone television. It would be up to the broadcast regulator ICASA to decide who would get the licence for this. Perhaps this is another reason for having Langa on board?
Vodacom chief executive Alan Knott-Craig told the Business Times recently that upgrading the local area broadcast network could be done within 12 months. The upgrade would involve putting antennae on existing cellphone networks and also placing some technology on the ground. Two main technologies – digital video broadcasting handheld (DVB-H) and MediaFLO – are vying to become the new global standard for mobile TV broadcasting.
Bernice Samuels, general manager of marketing and corporate affairs at MTN South Africa, says HSDPA went live on the MTN network on March 22, the first mobile operator to launch in South Africa.
From an entertainment point of view, Samuels says MTN customers will get mobile 2006 FIFA World Cup content delivered near real time directly to their cellphones using video, MMS and SMS.
MTN is investing in excess of R600 million this financial year in its 3G network as it advances the roll-out of sites across South Africa.
“To date, we have activated HSDPA on our highest usage 3G sites, making commercial HSDPA available to subscribers in most urban areas,” Samuels says.
Multichoice and M-Net have also begun trials to deliver certain DSTV programmes to cellphones, via DVB-H. A new division called M-Mobile has been formed to co-ordinate this.
The SABC, meanwhile, has formed a new division called SABC Mobile, which recently signed a deal with the company Foneworx. The aim of the deal is to bring SABC’s content to the phone in a faster more efficient way. One of the goals is to allow people to watch news clips on their phones.
The case for 3G connectivity might not be as strong as the cellphone companies are making out. Sentech’s portfolio manager for broadband wireless, Winston Smith, says Sentech’s’ broadband wireless is capable of up to ten times that of 3G download speeds offered by the cellular networks, but it is prohibited by the high cost of international bandwidth. This will change however, as bandwidth costs come down.
ICASA chairman Paris Mashile said recently that the regulator would soon introduce regulations to end Telkom’s monopoly and give other operators access to the international gateway. This means that prices should become more competitive. “One of the results of this would be decreased broadband costs,” Smith says. “Sentech would then be able to pass on those benefits to its customers.”
Smith says cellular networks champion the cause of HSDPA, but never mention that the uplink speed of the technology is only 64 kilobits per second. “Solutions in an internet and email environment require adequate download and uplink speeds to send and receive information. Therefore users who wait for HSDPA to meet their desire for faster connectivity speeds might be disappointed.”
The other disadvantage of a 3G data solution from a cellular network is that as the voice usage on the network increases, so the data side of the network suffers. Sentech’s network is tuned for data, making download speeds more stable.
Smith says Sentech’s new MyWireless flexi broadband wireless allows SMEs to pay only for a data package that suits their needs. Compared to the 3G offering from the cellular networks, Smith says flexi comes up trumps because it offers a better out-of-bundle rate for data of R1 per Megabyte. Its upload speed is double the speed of the cellular networks’ 3G offering, which only offers a maximum of 64kbps.
It’s the future and it’s a warm night at Letaba camp in the Kruger National Park. A hyena is sniffing at the fence, your partner is sipping a glass of wine and the lamb chops are sizzling above the coals. Everything is perfect, except one thing. You are missing a deciding one day cricket game between Australia and South Africa. The idea of flipping open the HSDPA 3G cellphone to catch the score is highly tempting. For a moment you consider it, but then you glimpse the look on your partner’s face. Some things are more frightening than technology.