Samsung South Africa is negotiating partnerships with telecommunications service providers such as Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom to deliver video-on-demand (VOD) services locally.
This is according to Matthew Thackrah, business leader of Consumer electronics at Samsung South Africa, who recently told MyBroadband in an interview that the bandwidth and data demands of VOD have prevented Samsung from launching such services in SA.
Thackrah explained that to stream normal (non-HD) content seamlessly, at least 4Mbps of download bandwidth is required.
Over-and-above the speed challenges, a single movie download consumes around 1.6GB, Thackrah said.
“If you download one movie on an HSDPA line, your data is gone in one movie,” Thackrah said. “If you then go over your data cap and you download a few movies, you don’t know what bill you’re going to get – but it’s going to be expensive.”
For that reason Samsung is negotiating with telcos to bundle large data packages with their TVs – 20GB or 30GB per month at fixed rates, Thackrah said.
Matthew Thackrah, Business Leader: Consumer Electronics - Samsung South Africa
This partnership will see Samsung and Telkom cooperate in the marketing of Samsung Smart TVs and fixed-line broadband solutions as bundled packages, thereby ensuring that consumers have access to affordable broadband while enabling Smart viewing experiences through Samsung’s latest Smart TV line-up.
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