PayTV provider Zuku on Tuesday announced an investment of $4.6 million that will be channeled towards improving service delivery. This will go to Satellite upgrades from the current NSS 21 to SES 5 that has a bigger capacity. The upgrade will have three benefits, ability to signal more channels (17 more channels to be added), enable Zuku to air HD channels and also increased coverage as the SES 5 will be able to spread out reach to over 40 countries in Africa, basically the whole of Sub-Sahara Africa.
In the upgrade that will take 4 months to cover existing customers in Kenya, Zuku will send their installers to switch the positioning of the Satellite dishes to face West from the current East. This will be done free. There will also be an over the air software upgrade to enable channels upgrades.
In regards to the Analogue-Digital shift that is underway in Kenya, Wananchi Group CEO Richard Bell noted that the benefits of the frequencies to be released may not trickle down to all service providers as the regulator, CCK which plays a huge role in frequencies allocations requires to be transparent in the process. He added that trials of technology is not what is needed but transparency in allocations is what matters. He said that access is what is preventing use of the frequencies for both internet and TV for both urban and rural scaling.
