The Managing Director of MultiChoice Nigeria, John Ugbe, has justified the company’s decision to hike its subscription rates which he said are necessary for the company to provide service to its consumers and also provide necessary returns to stakeholders.
He said: “It is because of the prevailing economic situation and rising cost of content and our other inputs that we have had to increase the cost of subscriptions and this has affected all the other entities across the continent. If you look at a lot of goods and services you will see that there is an increase in a lot of sectors as we are not isolated.”
According to him, the company provides its services through a model that is in use around the world that allows MultiChoice to take advantage of the economies of scale and provide an aggregate service that reduces the costs for all subscribers.
“I can confirm that no other country under MultiChoice is providing its pay-TV services through a “pay as you watch” model. People often confuse “Pay as you watch” model with “Pay Per view”, where essentially, subscribers pay specifically for big ticket events in addition to their monthly subscriptions. This effectively even makes the subscriptions more expensive,” he said.
He added that subscription rates have been increased across the continent.
“However, as an independent entity, we ensure that we take the decisions based on the prevailing market conditions. For example, where other countries may have effected price increases last year, this is our first increase in two years notwithstanding the changes in inflation foreign exchange and other indices in our local market,” he said.
“If you look at the changes in the economic indices, you will see that we have gone to great lengths to absorb some of the impacts. If you also look at the content we offer in comparison to our competitors, you will see that we still provide a lot of value for the price of our product. We recently at no cost to the subscriber upgraded a lot of our subscribers who had the old DStv decoders with old technology to the newest HD decoders, and in many cases even upgraded subscribers to the cutting edge new Explora decoder, which is in high demand.”
