Nigerians Drum Support for New DStv Rival, TStv

By Dipo Olowookere

There seems to be a massive support for pay TV platform, Telecom Satellite TV (TSTV), which recently announced its launch into the Nigerian market.

The company is presently trending on social media platforms in Nigeria, especially on Facebook, where users are calling for shares so as to spread the ‘good news’ of a far cheaper subscription fee compared with DStv.

For many years, Nigerians have endured paying heavily to enjoy programmes on the DStv platform, especially lovers of the English Premier League (EPL).

Some are made to pay over N14,000 monthly to ensure they watch live EPL, UEFA Champions League, FA Cup, La Liga and EFL matches.

Even calls by subscribers for the pay TV platform to come up with the ‘pay as you go’ system has been rejected by MultiChoice, the parent company of DStv.

However, the new TStv is offering this service as well as a very low subscription fee.

The firm partnered with a Europe-based television station, ABS Global, to launch into the Nigerian Broadcasting Service a Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite TV, which will cover all sub-Saharan African countries and provide over 100 TV channels to subscribers.

It was said that TSTV would be distributed on ABS-3A satellite located at the prime video neighbourhood of 3°W and the antenna would be straight to the sky such that there would be no interference.

When this deal was signed few months ago, Managing Director of TSTV, Mr Bright Echefu, assured subscribers that they would enjoy TV programmes in HD and SD, internet services, broadband at a very affordable rate.

A check by Business Post on the website of the company showed that TStv will over 100 channels to its subscribers with CNN, Channels TV, Nat Geo, Nickelodeon, MTV Base, Aljazeera, TVC News, Bein Sports, Euro Sport and Fox Sports, among others.

We gathered that TStv provides subscribers with an HD SMART Set Top Box (Connected Set top box), at the point of purchase, which converts their existing LED TV into a Smart TV.

While the DTH tech in it brings television channels in Standard Definition and High Definition, the Connected set top box allows one to browse content from Twitter, Facebook, Daily Motion, video on demand sites, Over the Top, OTT apps, news, weather etc. through applications residing on STB.

“Our HD Smart Set Top Box will work as a tool for personalization, engagement, and new customer experiences and with internet connectivity, one can convert one‘s TV into a smart TV using it.

“Subscribers are entitled to a complementary 20GB internet capacity every month and this service is available for extension on demand,” the firm said on its website.

It added that the TSTV STB Back-Office End-to-End Solution is an easy-to-maintain solution for delivering TV, Video-On-Demand, and interactive services to end users who use LAN. It suits for schools, hospitals, hotels, communities, securities firms and so on.

TSTV STB platform also includes in-built fast Wi-Fi, up to 802.11ac, 1 GBit/s Ethernet and USB 3.0 interface. TSTV STB supports built-in Bluetooth 4.0, RF for hybrid remote controls and support of Smart Home services via Zigbee/Thread standard. Multichannel video recording is possible via fast external USB 3.0 hard disks up to 50 Gigabyte capacity. Our Smart STBs also have the capacity to make video calls with other TSTV subscribers via IP.

Instead of buying separate smart TVs or dongles which are expensive, users can now buy our integrated set top boxes which allow them to directly connect to internet, stream media, and access subscribed content?

With our launch on July 25, 2017, TELCOMSAT has scaled new technological heights and demonstrated its ability by providing a high end advanced product that delivers next generation solutions as part of the idea of Internet of Things (IoT).

The feature of unlimited external recording is also available, by plugging in your own external storage device for recording your favourite programs, for e.g.: if one plugs in his own external hard drive of 1TB, they can record up to 1900 hours of content of a standard definition channel.

However, despite the frenzy on the internet, some Nigerians have called for caution, reminding others how HiTV and others tried to breakdown DStv monopoly, but failed.