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''In South Africa we've now got the situation where the next capacity that will go up is in October 2012 when we get [space on the satellite] IS20 and will then have a huge amount of capacity again,'' says Aletta Alberts, MultiChoice's general manager for content. ''From an HD perspective, in terms of bandwidth, about three standard definition (SD) channels make up one high definition (HD) channel, so you can see HD services are very capacity intense.''
''Also if you have SD and HD services on one transponder, you get less capacity out of that transponder. If you only had HD services you can probably get a little bit more HD services on there – but then it also depends on where they uplink, whether South Africa or the United Kingdom. Regarding our capacity for I7 – we get a little bit more in December – we are talking to suppliers to see whether there isn't other options around the Southern African free-to-airs . . . to move then off to another satellite,'' says Aletta Alberts.
''There's quite a few backup satellites but their power isn't strong enough to deliver high end services. We will assess services that needs a little bit lower bandwidth and that might free up some capacity. At the moment it's a big balance for us,'' says Aletta Alberts. ''Our SD audience is growing at a tremendous rate, but so is HD. And you have to balance the two to keep your SD definition subscribers happy but do enough HD for your HD subscribers to keep the box.''
