MTN says that it hopes to offer a meaningful streaming video service on its network in South Africa before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the group\u2019s results presentation in Johannesburg on Thursday (7 August 2014), MTN group president and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa, told BusinessTech: “We’ve been working on it…it’s and area in which we are learning a lot. We have looked at a number of opportunities.”<\/p>\n
“We think that we can conclude something definitely in Q3, and hopefully, we should have something in the market before the end of the year.”<\/p>\n
Bloomberg recently reported that MTN is in discussions with a company based in Asia to provide a streaming service on its network.<\/p>\n
Citing two people with knowledge of the talks, Bloomberg said that a deal with the content provider could be concluded before the end of the year and would enable MTN to offer access to movies and television content.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two parties have yet to decide a commercial model for the partnership,\u201d Bloomberg said.<\/p>\n
Rival operators, Vodacom and Telkom have also reportedly been linked to deals with content providers including Comcast, Bertelsmann, Naspers, and Netflix.<\/p>\n
Telkom recently extended an invitation to industry to bid for the provisioning of Video on Demand (VoD) services.<\/p>\n
In June, MTN said it had connected the first customers to its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) offering.<\/p>\n
Dabengwa said that MTN takes FTTx very seriously as an opportunity to deliver certain services, “especially when you look at video services, and high bandwidth services. It’s an important part in our high-end customer play”.<\/p>\n
MTN teams up with Simfy for streaming music<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n MTN in talks to stream content: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n