East Africa home TV penetration reaches 23% at end of 2014

The five countries of the East African Community (EAC) had 33.61 million households and a household television penetration rate of 23 percent at the end of December 2014, said research firm Dataxis. Kenya is the most developed market in the region with 12.04 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 32 percent. Uganda has 7.35 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 25 percent, followed by Tanzania with 7.35 million households and a home TV  penetration rate of 17 percent.

Pay-TV services accounted for approximately 1.61 million households meaning that free-to-air broadcasting is still the primary access method in over 79 percent of TV households. Tanzania has the largest Pay-TV base in the region with 592,700 users, accounting for 36 percent of the EAC total. Kenya was second with 561,000 users, followed by Uganda with 359,000, Burundi with 62,500 and Rwanda with 38,000.

DTT has an overall 53 percent market share of total Pay-TV users, followed by DTH with 43 percent and the remainder on CATV systems in Kenya and Tanzania. StarTimes edged out MultiChoice in terms of overall market share with 39 percent against 38 percent. The largest single platform was StarTimes DTT with a 34 percent market share, followed by the MultiChoice DSTV satellite offering (20%) and its GOtv DTT service (18%). StarSat, the StarTimes DTH offering, accounted for a further 4 percent.

There were 6.16 million FTA users across the EAC at the end of 2014. Analogue terrestrial was by far the largest access method accounting for 68 percent of total users. DTT had a 26 percent market share, followed by DTH with 6 percent. Rwanda was the only country to have completely turned off analogue, although Tanzania was scheduled to go digital-only in February followed in March by Kenya.