Pay TV service providers scramble for Uganda’s growing market

Wrong attitude: For long, the monopoly in Uganda’s pay TV market gave rise to the wrong perception that the service is a high-end luxury facility that is reserved for the wealthy.

“The active subscribers may not match with the number of subscribers as some had bought GTV and Smart TV decoders which they no longer use.”
StarTimes, however, declares even higher figures. According to Mr Simon Arineitwe, the sales manager, his company surpassed the 130,000 subscriber mark early this year.
“UCC has old statistics. Today, we have 160,000 subscribers. Maybe UCC says we had 130,000 active users by mid this year. But from our sales, we have sold 160,000 devices (decoders).”

Meanwhile, MultiChoice could not admit or deny this figure arguing that as a listed company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) they wouldn’t divulge individual country numbers.
“As the only company currently selling DVB T2, the officially recognised migration compliant set top boxes, it would be enough to say we are number one. On DStv given the nature of the technology, we cover the entire country and continent while on digital TV with GOtv, we cover most of the South Central region of Uganda including greater Kampala. However, our signal reaches as far afield as parts of Jinja,” Mr Hamya noted.

Low cost services
In the face of strong market potential, bigger numbers will only be achievable if pay TV services can give even much lower prices with desired content.
Recently, Mr Koenie Schutte, the Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association (SADIBA) treasury, said pay TV providers must improvise ways of tapping into the bigger mobile phones market arguing that mobile phone pay TV is more affordable and flexible.

“In this era, a TV is no longer that set in your living room or office. A TV is now any device on which an individual can be able to access visual broadcast services. Mobile phones and computers work as TVs. The future of pay TV services is in their ability to introduce more innovative service such as mobile pay TV. Companies should thrive and remain relevant to their customers through offering such services.”
Today, mobile pay TV services are slowly taking root in Uganda. StarTimes for example has in less than six months been able to hook about 800 subscribers on its mobile TV services while MultiChoice is also providing this service.

According to Mr Arineitwe, mobile TV was introduced to supplement the already existing range of products such as decoders, LCDs and CRTs.
“People need slimmer, portable and easy to use devices. They are always on the move and thus cannot be home to catch their favorite TV show. This is why we now have car and mobile TVs for people to watch from wherever they are.”

But Ms Christine Mawadri, the Zuku TV country manager, noted that while a lower price is everyone’s dream, it is important to consider the high costs of operations involved before delivering the service to people’s homes.

“Pay TV charges will continue to drop. It is however important to consider that the service is still expensive to offer. We who operate satellite TV services incur high costs of transmission and networking that is reflected on the charges. That is why DTT providers charge less than us,” Ms Mawadri said.

nkalungi@ug.nationmedia.com