Bakgatla to launch digital TV services by year end

Asha Speckman

THE Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela tribe, a community scattered across 32 villages in North West, is conducting trials with the intention to launch its own commercial digital television services this year.

Multichoice, which controls DStv, the subscription-based television service, and rival On Digital Media, which owns TopTV, are the only pay-TV providers in the country.

Yesterday, community leader Kgosi Nyalala Pilane said the Bakgatla planned to provide a combination of free-to-air and pay-TV channels initially to the community and later nationwide.

“The Bakgatla are almost 350 000 people. We aim to supply about 10 percent of the population,” Pilane said.

The service is managed by My Television, owned by Siyaya, a black-owned media consortium founded in 2008. Siyaya is majority owned by the community, represented by Pilane. Individual shareholders include Transnet Freight Rail boss Siyabonga Gama, former SA Post Office chairman Vuyo Mahlati and Thandi Ramathesele, a former SABC manager.

The community also holds 27 percent in a platinum mining and beneficiation company with Pallinghurst Resources and the Industrial Development Corporation.

Trials of the service, premised on local content, began two months ago and the signal is being transmitted to set-top boxes in 275 households across North West and Gauteng.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) granted a digital terrestrial television test licence to My Television in June last year. The station received the licence in August to undertake trials.

Sentech, the state broadcasting signal distributor, has allowed the consortium to use its infrastructure for the study.

The consortium expects its preliminary test results to be sent to Icasa this month and a licence to be issued within three months. “As soon as we get the licence we will go into serious launch,” Pilane said.

Abe Mogashoa, a spokesman at the consortium, said the initiative “talks to the developmental aspects of communities. Media ownership is slowly changing hands.”