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SES, a global satellite company and Computer Warehouse Group Plc (CWG), have launched a new digital television platform, on SES’s ASTRA 2F satellite, at 28.2 degrees East that would provide access to a greater number of stations to households in Nigeria and across West Africa.
The launching, which witnessed the attendance of broadcasters, IT professionals, advertisers and administrators, will see SES providing the space segment and specific ground services, while CWG will manage the teleport services required to project the signals to users, using high operational standards.
The chief technology officer of CWG Plc, Mr. James Agada in his remark, noted that CWG Plc is evolving away from the traditional IT Company in the Nigerian context to becoming a utility enabler, under the CWG 2.0 initiative. According to him, “The brand new digital ‘Direct To Home’ (DTH) free-to-air platform is ultimately designed to help accelerate and alleviate the challenges broadcasters and content owners face in the digital migration process. “The platform is packaged as an innovative approach in order to address the challenges of the cost of migration, operation, operational and support challenges, platform agility and flexibility and platform neutrality,” he added.
The new digital TV platform will afford broadcasters the opportunity of reaching a broader audience; millions of satellite homes in West Africa that receive broadcast signals with their dishes facing 28.2 degrees East. This will extend their frontiers of influence and enhance their bargaining chances with prospective advertisers.
SES shares a partnership history with CWG that spans about ten years. The SES Television platform will be the country’s first free-to-air (FTA) DTH digital TV platform. According to Theodore Asampong, SES sales Director, Africa, “All that the subscriber is required to pay for is the cost of acquiring a decoder and installing a dish to receive broadcast signals. After this, they will have access to all channels available on the platform, without subscription fees”.
The platform offers end-to-end contribution, ground and space services to local, regional, national and international TV broadcasters across West Africa at cheap rates. It will also afford broadcasters the privilege to migrate from analogue to digital TV to meet the digital migration deadline of June 2015.
