Oluniyi D.Ajao

A terrestrial digital mobile TV service has been launched in Accra Ghana, named BlackStar TV. According to the operators, this is the first implementation of the T-DMB technology on the African continent.

According to Wikipedia,

Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) is a digital radio transmission system for sending multimedia (radio, TV, and datacasting) to mobile devices such as mobile phones. This technology was first developed in South Korea under the national IT project and the world’s first official DMB broadcast started in South Korea in 2005, although trials were available much earlier. It can operate via satellite (S-DMB) or terrestrial (T-DMB) transmission. DMB is based on the Eureka 147 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard, and has some similarities with the main competing mobile TV standard, DVB-H.

Blackstar TV is currently running on test transmission here in Accra and is being offered in collaboration with Onetouch (a GSM cellular network). I was at the Ghana Telecom head office premises last Friday, to see a live demo of the devices. The quality on the little screens is just watch can be expected from a mobile device and no where near an analog mobile TV device.

Only one TV channel is currently active. It’s operators hope to broadcast 6 TV, 4 audio and 2 data channels when the service commences in full.
I’d do an extensive write-up on this issue on Mobile Africa, and link to it from here later.

Related posts:

1. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service
2. Vodafone, Zain, MTN, Tigo, Glo Mobile and their competition in Ghana
3. My expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana
4. Prepaid Mobile Phone SIM Cards in Ghana to be registered
5. Audio Streaming on Mobile Africa
6. Mobile Web East Africa 2010 for Nairobi Kenya
7. A review of MTN Nigeria Mobile Broadband service
8. African Mobile Marketing & Advertising Summit 2008
9. Google Adsense for Mobile
10. How I found my way to MEST Accra on Google Maps Mobile