Few options, bad habits: legitimate video streaming in SA’s uphill battle

All habits are difficult to break, but the bad ones especially so. Once we get used to doing something, it’s hard to change our behaviour, even when alternatives come along, and even if they’re better. This is one of the challenges streaming video services will have to contend with when they eventually land in South Africa – savvy South Africans have long since found workarounds to access legitimate international services, or illegal, free alternatives.

That’s not to say there won’t be a market for a local version of Netflix, Hulu or similar, but rather that the pick of that market – the early adopters and those who can afford uncapped, fixed-line Internet connections – may well have moved to other solutions, making them more difficult to win over. Three things could alleviate this problem: unprecedented convenience, aggressive pricing and substantial value-adds.

Another obstacle to widespread uptake of video streaming services is the limited local market, doubtless one of the main reasons we’ve yet to see one launch. Last month Telkom announced its annual results, and while it grew the number of ADSL connections by 6,5%, the total number in service is still a paltry 925 000, of which only a fraction offer 4Mbit/s download speeds or faster. Mobile operators, meanwhile, continue to grow their 4G networks, but the cost of data remains prohibitive for high-demand services like video.

Telkom is trialing VDSL solutions that promise 20Mbit/s to 40Mbit/s speeds along with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in selected suburbs, while suburbs like Parkhurst and the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg have grown tired of waiting and are instead building their own FTTH solutions. This sort of connectivity will increase demand for video-on-demand offerings and, in their absence, encourage consumers to try alternatives, of which there are plenty.

Technology adept and non-sport watching folk have been using virtual private network services like Media Hint and UnoTelly to access international services like Netflix (which doesn’t care where you’re paying from and, once you have a paid account, doesn’t care about the origin of your IP address is) for years, while the less adept are increasingly turning to illegal and incredibly easy-to-use services like Popcorn Time, EZTV, Couchtuner and Project Free TV.

For a time piracy wasn’t just popular in South Africa because of the cost savings it afforded, but because the local release of international films and series could take months, or even years – an intolerable delay in the era of globalisation.

The importance of convenience

Thanks to things like digital cinema projection — which means no longer having to wait for prints to be shipped here — and increasing sensitivity to and awareness of this problem by content distributors, delays are less of a problem these days. Even Multichoice’s DStv airs the latest TV shows as little as a week or two after they air abroad. The challenge now is convenience.

Streaming services are finally overtaking piracy in most markets where they’re available because paying a nominal monthly fee for access to more, high-quality content than any one could ever consume is more convenient and reliable than piracy.

Also, services like Netflix integrate better with gaming consoles, media centres and other devices than online YouTube-style streaming services, which still require plugging a computer into a display if you want to watch them on anything other than your laptop or desktop. In the developed world convenience is winning out.

Unfortunately for content owners and distributors, illegal services are becoming increasingly convenient and user-friendly themselves, which erodes legitimate offerings’ key advantage. Further, because they’re devoid of the restrictions that face legal offerings (like exclusivity agreements, limited archive offerings or regional licensing variations) and free, they’re particularly appealing to price-sensitive markets like those found in Africa.

DStv has taken advantage of South Africa’s bandwidth constraints by launching its own video-on-demand services like BoxOffice, which provides a limited number of on-demand films for a fee using satellite technology, but its limitations are obvious when compared to all-you-can-eat offerings like Netflix.

The solution may lie in subsidised streaming services from network operators or partnerships between them and content distributors. Regardless of the route taken, the sooner legitimate services come to market the better, because the time until they do is only entrenching behaviour that reduces the demand for them while increasing the prevalence of alternatives. Africa wants what the rest of the world gets, and if it can’t buy it, it’ll take it.

Image: Stéfan via Flickr.