Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

AfricaCOM 2022: Taking the Pulse of Africa's Digital Transformation

28/11/2022

2022 will forever be the year that in-person events got back on their feet after two years in hibernation. As we've seen at all the events NAGRA has attended this year, the overwhelming desire to reconnect with colleagues and friends has been responsible for getting us all together again. The recent AfricaCOM expo, the flagship event of Africa's Tech Festival in Cape Town certainly supported this theory with our stand team reporting an atmosphere of curiosity and vibrancy that brought an unmistakably African vibe to proceedings.

Engaging with our stand visitors, we were struck by how keen everyone one was to get delayed projects moving again and learn how the challenges of a digital landscape so broad and diverse as Africa can be met with today's solutions. It was also great to reconnect with key partners to discuss the latest trends and review the projects we're jointly working on across Africa.

At our stand we ranged a number of solutions designed to respond to the questions of our visitors.

Hybrid OTT Streaming

Our Hybrid OTT streaming solutions showed the range of advanced features that can now be deployed quickly and simply onto retail-available hardware such as an Android TV set-top box. Powered by the NAGRA OpenTV Video Platform, our hybrid streaming solutions are used the world over by organizations looking to offer aggregated solutions driven by the great rebundling'. These solutions help operators deliver greater value by providing their subscribers with access to all the content they love via one central app - irrespective of the content's source or originating service. Our customer case studies of Starhub in Singapore and Claro in Colombia - who also added direct billing for Netflix to their service, attracted a lot of interest as new strategies and approaches were considered.

Direct-To-TV

For a continent where direct-to-TV solutions enjoy considerable success, we had a lot of discussions not only about our conditional access module (CAM) solutions but also our innovative TVkey solution which NAGRA created with Samsung. Deployed by HD+ in Ghana, it allows operators to tap into new distribution channels such as electrical retail and acquire subscribers through tantalizing offers as part of a new TV purchase. Also offering the ability to offer an identical user experience to that seen on a set-top box with the operator's brand front and center, there was a lot of discussion about how this can help address the challenges associated with reducing the cost to serve while still offering highly secure premium 4K content.

Protecting Revenues from Piracy

For those visitors who had already launched streaming propositions, there were a lot of conversations about how, as they rollout more premium content, the challenges get magnified as richer pickings are spotted by pirates. Themes such as CDN content theft, credential sharing and app protection were all discussed at length. The NAGRA Active Streaming Protection framework is designed to address the threats posed by streaming piracy. Featuring several different options and technologies, it aims, through a central security monitoring and analytics dashboard, to provide a clear, end-to-end view of the challenges facing the network. For today's streaming providers, multi-DRM isn't enough, and the distributed nature of OTT delivery means there are several aspects that need to be holistically considered to gain a true picture of the streaming piracy threat.

Growing Cybersecurity Threats

Our increasingly connected lifestyles mean that the attack surface area we expose to cyber criminals is considerable. But if you multiply that up and consider the surface area that operators are having to defend, the size of the challenge (and threat) is even larger. Add to this the dependency on the cloud and increasingly digital interactions with consumers and the shape of the new landscape is clear. For several operators that don't have in-house cyber teams, this is a daunting prospect and so our teams were happy to discuss how our holistic cyber protection solutions offer not only a focus on anti-piracy but also cybersecurity services such as incident response. These solutions focus on proactive approaches although when a reaction is necessary, our cyber fusion center teams respond instantly.

The team had a great time at AfricaCOM and as my colleague Mlu Mhlungu said, It's just great to be back chatting with people face to face and learning how we can help them continue to be successful. Our South Africa based team are looking forward to continuing the conversations started at AfricaCOM and are also excited to be moving to a new office in Cape Town in the New Year - if you're in the area, get in touch and we'll get the coffee on!
LINK: https://dtv.nagra.com/africacom-2022-taking-pulse-africas-digital-tran...
See more stories from nagra

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

01/07/2026

FCC Plans to Auction 160 MHZ of Midband Spectrum

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

CBS Miami Launches Hope 4 Venezuela' Relief Effort

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Riedel, SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration With SimplyLive Integration

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Gray Media to Buy American Spirit Media's TV Stations

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Cascade PBS Launches App Solution Provider 'Local Public

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camerabag collection for modern hybrid creators

Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camera bag collection for modern h...

01/07/2026

Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition

Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition Brie Clayton July 1, 2026 0 Comments Volunteers use ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Desig...

01/07/2026

Riedel, SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration WithSimplyLive Integration

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

PlayBox Technology Publishes State of Broadcast Infrastru...

PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...

01/07/2026

Jigsaw24 Appoints Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media a...

LONDON, UK, 1 JULY Jigsaw24 has appointed Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media and Entertainment, reinforcing its continued investment in helping broadcaster...

01/07/2026

Content Vault Partner with XMA to Distribute Universal Fi...

Content Vault, the patent-pending secure content distribution platform protecting high-value media from disclosures, theft and unauthorised access, today announ...

01/07/2026

Bitcentral Announces Strategic Evolution to Create Two F...

Bitcentral, Inc. a leading provider of enterprise software and digital media solutions for news, sports and entertainment broadcasters, as well as streaming pla...

01/07/2026

Adder Technology Names Neil Hillier as CEO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

IBCAP Opens New Anti-Piracy Lab in Denver

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

FCC Plans to Auction 160 MHZ of Mid-Band Spectrum

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

CBS Miami Launches 'Hope 4 Venezuela' Relief Effort

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through national partnership

Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through nation...

01/07/2026

Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Experience for Live Broadcast Production

Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Expe...

01/07/2026

Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive

Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersiv...

01/07/2026

Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinity Photo

Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinit...

01/07/2026

Apple Creator Studio gets smarter, faster, and more connected - UPDATE - Posted on 30 June 2026

Apple today introduced power-packed updates to Apple Creator Studio, a groundbre...

01/07/2026

Nectar360 becomes first UK Retail Media Network to achieve IAB Europe Certification following independent ABC audit

Nectar360, the Retail Media, Loyalty and Insights business of the Sainsburys Gro...

01/07/2026

FIFA World Cup delivers strong audiences across all RT platforms

9.2 million streams on RT Player between 11 and 28 June Reach of 2.9 million viewers during Group stages of FIFA World Cup on RT 2 23 million video views acr...

30/06/2026

Entries open for Thomson's Young Journalist Award 2026

Could your journalism reach an international stage? Entries are now open for the Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2026, one of the most prestigi...

30/06/2026

CazTVs 12 ENG Teams Across North America Keep Brazilian Fans on Top of World Cup

As Brazil's only way for fans to see all 104 matches, YouTube channel proves the power of digital...

30/06/2026

UJAM release Retrocraft multi-effects

Brings together saturation & lo-fi effects Following on from the release of their Voxcraft vocal-processing plug-in, UJAM have announced the launch of Retro...

30/06/2026

Zensphere v2 from Rapid Flow

New IR reverb engine, Juno-inspired chorus & more The latest version of Rapid Flow's hardware-emulation synth plug-in expands on its predecessor with a ...

30/06/2026

Shy Audio release Shy 90s Smack

Excels at heavy-handed VCA compression For their latest release, Shy Audio have recreated the crunchy' sound of a rackmount compressor that found its w...

30/06/2026

Apple raise Mac & iPad prices

Component scarcity drives cost increases Shortly after Apple's CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that cost increases would soon be inevitable , the company hav...

30/06/2026

Statement regarding GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign

Statement regarding GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign 30 June, 2026 Media releases The GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign is an independent initiative. SBS ...

30/06/2026

The First Hitachi Cash Recycling Devices in the EU Were Deployed at Bank Pekao S.A.

Hitachi and Bank Pekao S.A. have completed the installation of the first Hitachi...

30/06/2026

Clear-Com Upgrades Communication Systems for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune

eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......

30/06/2026

Telemundo, Peacock See More Record Setting World Cup Audiences

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

FOR-A America Adds Two Execs to U.S. Sales Team

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

A3SA Disputes Weigel Assertions that NextGen TV Threatens EAS

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

MainStreaming Selected by ITV to Support Delivery of ITVX...

MainStreaming, the award-winning and innovative Edge Video Delivery Network, today announced that it has been selected by ITV to support the delivery of ITVX, I...

30/06/2026

Chyron Launches New Chyron Academy

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Clear-Com Upgrades Communication Systems for Jeopardy and...

When Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! needed to upgrade their wireless communications system, they turned to Clear-Com FreeSpeak wireless for their iconic televi...

30/06/2026

Supreme Court Gives Trump Tight Control over Independent Regulators

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Rocket Lab to Acquire Iridium in $8 Billion Deal

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Kyocera AVX Releases New Web-Based Antenna Integration Tool

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

YouTube Shorts Get a Makeover

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Rise Announces 2026 Worldwide Mentoring Cohorts

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Other World Computing Launches New Atlas Core Line with 256GB CFExpress 4.0 Type B Memory Card

Other World Computing Launches New Atlas Core Line with 256GB CFExpress 4.0 Type...

30/06/2026

DaVinci Resolve Studio Used for Taketoshi Sado's Perfume Cold Sleep -25 years Document-

DaVinci Resolve Studio Used for Taketoshi Sado's Perfume Cold Sleep -25 year...