Gateway Television (GTV) Namibia was awarded a broadcast licence at the beginning of October. GTV Namibia launched its service on Friday 12 October. The cost of the commercial broadcast licence is N$80000 per annum, and GTV Namibia has already paid N$20000 according to Johan Schutte, Director of the Namibia Communication Commission (NCC).
GTV is a Pan-African television service which is available in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana, Rwanda, Mauritius, Zambia and Ghana, and is currently proceeding with a phased rollout across sub-Saharan Africa. “In preparation for launching GTV, we asked consumers what they want from their televisions. Overwhelmingly, English football was the answer – and high subscription prices was the complaint. We listened and our service will give consumers Premier League football for less,” said Julian McIntyre of Gateway Broadcast Service, the company behind GTV.
The station will carry around 80 percent of all football matches, including up to eight live matches per week. Less than two percent of Namibian households subscribe to pay television services.
The GTV service is a direct-to-home satellite-based service and promises to deliver at substantially reduced costs.
The service offers two packages: the ‘G Base’ is available at N$170 per month and includes ‘G Prime’, BBC World, Sky News, Al-Jazeera, MTV Base, Kiss, God Channel, and Zee Cinema. ‘G Plus’ offers the full bouquet of G Base plus G-Sports 1 and 2, and Fox Sports Africa for N$260 per month. The cost of the dish, decoder and smartcard package is N$1 950 including installation and value added tax (VAT).
Gateway Broadcast Service has invested over US$250 million in Africa and has announced a further investment of over US$35 million in expanding its next generation network (NGN) in West Africa.
(New Era (Windhoek), 15 October 2007)
Source: New Era – Windhoek/ Russell Southwood
