It has been estimated that about 29 million households may be free from the yoke of pay television monthly subscriptions when the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) finally activates 34 other states in the country with its digital switch over.
This means that most households, which presently cough out between N6,000 and N38,000 for set-top box (STB – decoder) and monthly subscription fees of between N3,500 and N2,000 depending on the bouquet (package), to access content that may not even be watched owing to poor signal from Pay TV service providers, will have their expenditure cut substantially when this innovation gathers critical mass.
But ahead of this pay cut, the Federal Government said it has fixed price of N1,500 for the purchase of STBs and an annual digital access fee of N1,000. Already, activated STBs for Jos and Abuja have risen to 105,077 and 283,414 respectively. But by the time STBs are activated for the remaining 34 states, more households would be saved trillions of naira, our investigations reveal.
Under the prevailing Pay TV regime, an average household subscribes to the service with N3,500 and in 12 months that would amount to N42,000 and about N420,000 in 10 years if rates are not hiked along the line.
However, there are other higher premium packages that go for between N9,500 and N12,000 for the elite class while blue chip organisations, government agencies and media owners subscribe heavily to the high end premium monthly to access local and foreign contents.
According to Daily Sun’s calculations, if 29 million households subscribe to N3,500 monthly, private Pay TV firms would be raking in an average of N101.2 billion monthly and over N1.218 trillion yearly.
For government’s STBs, 29 million subscribe at N1,000 annually, could amount to N29 billion. This, however, does not include the Federal Government agencies that pay premium packages.
Do you guys think this can threaten dstv’ s monopoly. We all know it’s dstv then others…
