Bandwidth prices hurt MultiChoice
MultiChoice launched its DSTV on demand service in November 2007, offering its premium and compact subscribers online access to 1 000 hours of content from its DSTV schedule.
MultiChoice’s Richard Fyffe said at the time that DSTV subscribers could expect much more from this service in future, especially when the local Internet and broadband market improves.
Local bandwidth pricing has, however, started to take its toll on MultiChoice which is now planning to move the DSTV on demand service offshore.
Fyffe said that the very high cost of bandwidth in South Africa left the company with little choice but to explore international hosting to bring this bandwidth intensive content to South Africans.
This is, however, nothing new and a large portion of South Africa’s new media and larger independent websites are hosted offshore.
Many IT professionals feel that the exorbitant bandwidth costs associated with local website hosting remains the biggest barrier to the growth of the local internet industry.
“It is particularly crippling to the growth of rich, innovative local content and Web 2.0 developments. As things stand, website success spells instant financial disaster for local developers,” said one forumite.
According to Vodacom Business’ Wally Beelders users can expect this scenario to change within the next 12 to 18 months, with massive bandwidth price reductions on the cards.
Local bandwidth pricing discussion
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