Johannesburg — COUCH potatoes in Africa will soon have a new way of whiling away their time, with Gateway Communications launching a pan-African pay-television satellite service.

Dubbed GTV, it will provide international and local programmes.

It will not be launched in SA, however, and Gateway has not applied for one of the new subscription broadcasting licences now on offer.

The local market is monopolised by MultiChoice, which will soon face fresh competition, as a total of 18 licence applications have been submitted to the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

The SABC and Sentech have teamed up to bid, Telkom has applied in its own right and smaller companies are bidding in partnership with foreign players.

By targeting other African countries, Gateway is aiming for an even less well-penetrated market. Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's lowest take-up of pay-television, as fewer than 1% of television-owning households subscribe. That compares to 15% in eastern Europe, 36% in western Europe and 93% in the US.

The monthly subscription of $20 had been designed to penetrate the underserved African television market, Gateway said, and easily undercut the prices charged by MultiChoice.

Gateway believes Africa promises a large and rapidly growing market for its services, with 46-million television sets in use and the number growing by more than 10% a year.

It expects subscription television to be worth more than $3bn by 2015.

GTV will provide sport, movies, soap operas, music, education and religious broadcasts, and will focus heavily on African content.

Its own-brand channels will include G Prime, an entertainment and movie channel, and two channels of live sports events.

"The African market has been artificially constrained by monopoly pricing and nonrelevant content," said Gateway Communications president Julian McIntyre.

"Consumers across Africa want to watch the latest high-quality television programming that combines international and local content which is relevant to their lives and at a price that is comparable to a utility."

Gateway's pan-African network infrastructure includes the satellite access it will use to transmit the programmes from June.