Case Study: Econet Wireless achieves secure, scalable TV‑Everywhere streaming across Africa with Verimatrix

Econet Media Brings Compelling TV Everywhere Service to Africa

Econet Wireless (through its Econet Media/Kwesé pay‑TV business) set out to bring a TV‑Everywhere service — combining satellite DTH Kwesé TV and the Kwesé Play OTT platform — to Sub‑Saharan Africa while protecting high‑value sports content and minimizing total cost of ownership. Faced with the need for cardless DVB conditional access, scalable revenue security for millions of users, and a single‑stream HLS plus single‑DRM approach for many device types, Econet selected Verimatrix and its VCAS for DVB Hybrid to secure the mixed broadcast and OTT environment.

Verimatrix deployed VCAS for DVB Hybrid and integrated it via APIs with AWS Elemental and the Roku‑based Kwesé Play player, enabling a single input per stream encoded as Apple HLS with a unified DRM. The Verimatrix solution removed multi‑DRM and multi‑encoding complexity, reduced backend repackaging load, improved QoE and more consistent QoS at peak times, and delivers proven scalability to millions of subscribers. The hybrid service now supports dozens of channels across 21 countries (Kwesé Play launched in South Africa in Sept 2017 and is live so far in Ghana, Lesotho, Botswana and Rwanda) as Econet rolls out TV Everywhere.

Econet Wireless

Anton Lokotsch

Head of Technical