Thursday 6 August 2015

NUMBER OF STARTIMES SUBSCRIBERS HITS 2.6 MILLION

In its quest to assist Nigeria in metamorphosing from analogue to digital broadcasting, StarTimes has made it graphical that it had achieved the feat of connecting 2.6 million subscribers to digital terrestrial television.

Tectono Business Review got to know this development when the Chairman of the company, Mr. Pang Xing, made it known during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja a few days ago. According to him, StarTimes had within five years of its operation in Nigeria contributed N4bn to the revenue base of the country through the payment of taxes. He stated that it had covered about 80 towns with digital signal, adding that efforts were on top gear to expand its frontiers to other cities.

While speaking on the challenges facing the operation of StarTimes in Nigeria, Mr. Xing made it clear that the speed of getting frequency approval from the industry regulator, the National Broadcasting Commission, could be slow, adding that this was negatively impacting on its expansion ambition.

Mr. Xing said through leveraging on new technologies, StarTimes had been able to drive down the cost of pay television in the country even as the quality of services continued to improve, adding that it had been able to increase the number of people who could afford to watch digital television which was overpriced before the arrival of the company five years ago.

The StarTimes boss said that the company was constantly making efforts to expand its programming, including offering the German football league in its bouquet, adding that Igbo and Yoruba channels would soon join the Hausa channel in an effort to boost local content.

Speaking on digital broadcasting in the country, he said that the government needed to take more action and that there was a need to stop the importation of analogue television sets into the country since the world had gone digital.

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