Tag Archives: OTT

Envivo unveils mobile OTT service

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Nigerian media firm Envivo Communications is launching an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service called nVIVO TV to increase its offering of Nollywood and international video content to devices throughout Africa.

Olu Obadina

Africa continues to register low television penetration within households, and there is still on average of only one cinema screen per million people. As a result, streaming video is fast becoming the most popular way to watch movies, shows and other content, as many households having smartphones or other mobile devices.

To help broaden the availability of video in Africa, Envivo will offer streaming video services for Nollywood and international content across mobile devices including phones, tablets and PCs.

nVIVO TV will use Cisco OTT video solutions and will be made available in early 2018.

“The vision of nVIVO TV is to drive the African and African diaspora market towards a new online streaming experience that provides significant domestic content,” said Olu Obadina, chairman and chief innovation officer at Envivo.

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OyaWatch SVoD debuts on Red Bee

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Nigerian subscription-based streaming service OyaWatch TV has launched on the Red Bee OTT platform.

OyaWatch offers a wide variety of live and on-demand content from a range of international broadcasters and local sources and is available through applications and browsers on all major devices and smart TVs, with multiple language options and large channel packages.

The streaming service integrates with other Red Bee services, including content aggregation, metadata and automatic captioning. The name OyaWatch comes from the Yorùbá slang ‘oya,’ meaning ‘instant’ or ‘instantly,’ which is a popular expression in Nigeria.

OyaWatch is available in English, French, Hausa, Arabic, Igbo and Yorùbá and offers more than 60 channels of live news, movies, TV shows, documentaries, sports and children’s content. Packages start at N1,500 per month.

Ronaldo Minaise, CEO and founder of the company, said: “By launching OyaWatch TV, we want to make the best global and local media and entertainment experiences available to everyone in Nigeria. Through Red Bee’s OTT platform, we have built a competitive subscription service available on every device, including smartphones, which is crucial in reaching a wider audience in Nigeria.”

Steve Nylund, CEO of Red Bee, added: “OyaWatch is a pioneering service in the Nigerian media and entertainment landscape and we’re looking forward to seeing it grow in the years to come. It’s another great example of how our OTT platform offers a solid foundation for anyone looking to launch and develop a streaming service, no matter the ambition level or business idea.”

Red Bee Media is a global media services company headquartered in London, with 2,300 employees spread across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and North America.

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TV, radio licensing stirs mixed feelings

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The recent move by Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari to license radio and television stations has sparked a mixed reaction.

Lai Mohammed

While some commentators support the development, saying it will sanitise the online space and stop incendiary web-broadcast sites from fanning the embers of hate and division, others feel the move is inherently wrong.

Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, defended the move, which is part of wide-ranging reforms of the broadcasting industry. “Web TVs and radio stations, including foreign broadcasters beaming signals into Nigeria, will be licensed because we must bring sanity into this industry,” he said.

Online radio and television stations, known as over-the-top (OTT) services, are accessed by most internet users today. The Nigerian Communications Commission is under pressure about how and when to regulate OTT players, which have been described as a serious threat to traditional telecoms operators.

Although the NCC has repeatedly claimed that it will not regulate technology, stakeholders have called on the organisation to look for ways to curb the growing influence of OTT players such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Wechat, Telegram, Viber, Skype and Imo.

Umar Danbatta, the NCC’s executive vice chairman and CEO, has urged mobile operators to restructure their business models to increase revenue in the face of challenges raised by OTT services.

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