A major cable television firm in the country, MutiChoice Nigeria, has disclosed that the pay per view model being canvassed by the Senate as against the current monthly billing, will be difficult to implement.
The Chief Executive Officer of MultiChoice Nigeria, John Ugbe, made this known to the Senate on Thursday in Abuja.
Ugbe spoke when he appeared at a one-day public hearing organised by the Senate Ad Hoc Panel to investigate Pay TV hikes and demand for the pay-per view subscription model in Nigeria.
However, the duo of Dr. Bright Echeffe, Chief Executive Officer of TStv, and Tunde Aina, Chief Operating Officer of StarTimes, said Cable TV operators could adopt pay per day model to ameliorate the pains of poor subscribers.
Ugbe said several legal and legislative moves made to compel the firm to operate per view model did not the standard for operation.
He said: “Whilst it may appear to be a noble intent for this Committee to be concerned over the rising cost of subscription services, however, the Pay-Per-View model being canvassed by this Committee will not work either to the benefit of the consumer or the industry.
“It would appear that this problem is because of some confusion in understanding the basic definitions and distinctions between some of the existing operational business models in telecommunications and pay-tv broadcasting.
“A pay per view is not the same and is very different from Pay As You Go.
“The PPV model allows a subscriber to watch some special one-off events, usually of the high-ticket variety in sports and entertainment, by paying for such events in addition to having an active subscription.
“Pay-As-You-Go accommodates a metered mode of service, where consumers are billed only for the service they consume and not for a fixed period.
“The desire by this Committee to adopt PPV is further challenged by the nonexistence of any technology that can detect and or determine the viewers are tuned in per time.
“Once it is impossible to have this knowledge, billings based on ‘per view’ become difficult if not almost impossible.
“It is therefore my humble submission to this distinguished committee that due to the nature of content acquisition and technological limitations that PAYG model is not practical for broadcasting and thus is not practiced and basically cannot be implemented anywhere in the world.”
However, Echeffe said Cable TV operators could adopt pay per day model to ameliorate the pains of poor subscribers.
He said: “Pay per view is not feasible but we came up with pay per day.
“We also allow our subscribers to choose the package based on the number of channels they wanted to watch.”
—
Follow The Eagle Online Channel on WhatsApp
