If you haven’t heard, DSTV just increased subscription to N10,300 for their premium bouquet. Based on this it is pretty obvious the entry of HiTv had all but increased the cost of pay tv. I blogged about it a while back and it’s a term I call negative competition.
Strange as it seems, it is still cheaper than the combined cost of N15,500 when HiTv was at their highs. At that time HitTv was N6,000 and DSTV 9,500. DSTV will rightly argue that their increase is just a “mere” N800 which is still N1,700 cheaper than it was back then.
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The point therefore is sometimes competition don’t make sense when the players are very few and control a large portion of the product or service. If there wasn’t HiTv we probably still will be paying N10,300 with DSTV owning rights to the programs HiTv has and vice versa. The only way to stop all this exploitation is for the Government to pursue a rights sharing system between both players. That way HiTv will allow DSTV show programs on that they have a right to and vice versa. Therefore you really need not own both decoders which by all accounts is the case for most Nigerians. A situation I consider preposterous.
People should respond by directing their protest at content sharing and not at forcing one party to reduce price. That way you need not own 2 decoders and surely prices will crash and customer satisfaction will take center stage. I’m sure if it were HiTv that had most of the programs they will increase prices to. Recall that a their height their prices jumped almost 95% from N3,500 to N6000.
See DSTV email confirming the increase below.
1 March 2011
Dear Valued Subscriber
RE: Annual subscription price increase for DStv
Please be advised that MultiChoice Nigeria annual subscription price increase will become effective 1 April 2011. In determining a price increase MultiChoice takes into account many factors including, and amongst others, the impact on the subscriber, operational costs, satellite lease costs, programming costs and efficiencies effected within the company.
Please see new DStv subscription pricing below:
Premium Bouquet: N9,500 to N10,300
Premium Bouquet + Asian: N11,500 to N12,420
Access Fee *: N1,200 to N1,800* This applies in a case of Dual View installation.
However, for the first three months DStv will be discounting the new DStv Premium subscription price by N300 per month which means you will only pay N10,000 for April, May and June 2011 after which the full price of N10,300 will be billed. This initiative is being undertaken to relieve the pressure of the price increase to our loyal DStv Premium subscribers.
DStv continues to provide world-class home television entertainment, news and sports programming in line with the best digital pay television platforms worldwide.
We are most grateful for your continued support and will continue to provide a service that is consistent, efficient, and accessible.
Yours sincerely
Joseph Hundah
Managing Director
MultiChoice Nigeria
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I used to think that more customers meant less increase in subscription fees,but with dstv,I thought wrong,and many nigeriana also got it wrong. Dstv has had a habit of increasing their susbription fees as it pleases them. With the number of subscribers daily,doesn't it account for something? That dstv should start deducing their fees and adding more channels and stop the repeating programmes over and over again?,can dstv learn to show current movies and documentries. Can dstv also cut down ontheir prices,nigerians are struggling here and we have the higest number of subscribers in Africa. The monopoly is just crazy n their services really suck.
I agree with you completely. The only way to fight this off is through content sharing and pay per view. That way new players can come into the market and still show big events like football etc resulting in a price reduction
The Nigeria society is a funy one, it gives room to exploitation and stream blue murder when somebody takes the opportunity. At the onset of GSM we complained that the N50 cost per minute was too high while Government havested a huge amount of money it promised to invest in rural telephony, where is it today? We have TV/Radio stations that are glorified hobbyist stations with no improvement in programming. Dstv does it research and responds to the needs of it subscribers,NOLLY wood;Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo programming +premiership and champions league are atestation of their dynamic programming to the satisfaction of the subscribers. The Nigeria market is a very big one that can be self regulating if the stagnating local stations can challenge the Dstv
I agree with you Oriyomi. But we cant keep being at the receiving end of both the Government and Private Sector.