MultiChoice Blocks Geo Piracy With GeoGuard VPN And Proxy Detection

Multichoice, Africa’s leading entertainment group, has deployed the GeoGuard VPN and proxy detection from GeoComply to combat content piracy.

With GeoGuard integrated on its streaming platform, MultiChoice is now blocking tens of thousands of pirate viewers each month, while nearly eliminating creation of suspicious user accounts, according to GeoComply. This dramatic reduction in piracy has freed up infrastructure capacity and cut CDN costs.

GeoGuard is protecting MultiChoice’s DStv App, which streams live and catch-up content in countries across sub-Saharan Africa. MultiChoice went live with GeoGuard in February 2021 through the Amazon Marketplace, using the ‘turn on and go’ capability provided through GeoGuard’s integration with Amazon CloudFront.

“As for all OTT broadcasters, geo-piracy is a major concern, and it was a real coup when we deployed GeoGuard and quickly achieved a great return on investment,” said Greg van Wyngaard, Senior Engineer at MultiChoice’s Connected Video division. GeoGuard works seamlessly in the background to safeguard content for legitimate users, ensures territorial exclusivity and helps comply with content distribution obligations with rights owners, van Wyngaard added. “From an OTT broadcaster perspective, the cost savings and efficiency it’s providing in our streaming infrastructure is a huge bonus.”

MultiChoice chose GeoGuard for its ability to protect its revenues and business models without impacting legitimate users. Other factors in its decision were GeoGuard’s regular database updates, to reduce both false negatives and false positives, and its support for SmartDNS, a technology designed to circumvent geo-restricted services.

GeoGuard is rated by Kingsmead Security as 99.6% effective in detecting VPNs and DNS proxies and GeoComply claims it is updated more often than any other such package on the market to ensure low false positives and high accuracy rates. GeoGuard protects over 10 billion streaming requests and over 300 million unique streaming users per month as the Hollywood Studio-approved gold standard. It is also integrated into the platforms of major CDN providers, such as Akamai and Amazon CloudFront.

As Africa’s leading entertainment company, Multichoice offers Direct to Home (DTH), Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and online video entertainment services, reaching 20.9 million subscribers. 

You might also like...

KVM & Multiviewer Systems At NAB 2024

We take a look at what to expect in the world of KVM & Multiviewer systems at the 2024 NAB Show. Expect plenty of innovation in KVM over IP and systems that facilitate remote production, distributed teams and cloud integration.

Wi-Fi Gets Wider With Wi-Fi 7

The last 56k dialup modem I bought in 1998 cost more than double the price of a 28k modem, and the double bandwidth was worth the extra money. New Wi-Fi 7 devices are similarly premium-priced because early adaptation of leading-edge new technology…

NAB Show 2024 BEIT Sessions Part 2: New Broadcast Technologies

The most tightly focused and fresh technical information for TV engineers at the NAB Show will be analyzed, discussed, and explained during the four days of BEIT sessions. It’s the best opportunity on Earth to learn from and question i…

Standards: Part 6 - About The ISO 14496 – MPEG-4 Standard

This article describes the various parts of the MPEG-4 standard and discusses how it is much more than a video codec. MPEG-4 describes a sophisticated interactive multimedia platform for deployment on digital TV and the Internet.

The Big Guide To OTT: Part 9 - Quality Of Experience (QoE)

Part 9 of The Big Guide To OTT features a pair of in-depth articles which discuss how a data driven understanding of the consumer experience is vital and how poor quality streaming loses viewers.