The Sunday Mail
Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to respond to your questions as per the ones printed in The Sunday Mail last week. Unfortunately our responses were not ready when you went to print. We pride ourselves on the content offerings and services that we provide to our customers, and we always welcome discussion in the media.
Q: It seems like it is becoming increasingly impossible to pay for DStv using bond notes in the country, does Multichoice Zimbabwe accept bond notes?
A: MultiChoice Zimbabwe does not accept any form of payment directly from DStv customers. All payments for DStv subscriptions are made to financial institutions and then remitted to MultiChoice Africa.
Q: Why did platforms like Ecocash and Telecash cease to offer payment platforms for DStv? Could this be related to the above scenario?
A: Unfortunately we cannot comment on a third party’s business decisions nor the reasons or motivations behind them.
Q: Most DStv agents are refusing to take bond notes as payment for DStv packages, are they acting out of their own or under instruction from Multichoice Zimbabwe?
A: As per the response given on the first question, all DStv subscription payments are made via financial institutions and MultiChoice Zimbabwe does not accept payments. Similarly, DStv agents would work with financial institutions with regard to remittance for DStv services.
Q: Why are DStv packages, comparatively, more expensive in Zimbabwe as compared to other countries, for example, South Africa?
A: In the last two years, MultiChoice has not increased the annual subscription pricing in Zimbabwe and in fact, prices were actually reduced in November last year. The price of DStv packages vary from country to country as prices are dependent on a number of factors related to the cost of delivering the service in each country. Some countries have subscription rates higher than those for Zimbabwe while are others have lower rates. In South Africa, the cost of DStv Premium is marginally less. However, on the lower tier packages, prices are the same even though South Africa has a subscriber base which is over five million and is able to amortise their costs of delivery.
Q: Even during the days of the Zimdollar, whereas other countries in the sub-region could pay for their packages in their own currencies, kwacha in Zambia, pula in Botswana, meticais in Mozambique, that facility was never extended to Zimbabwe. Why was that so?
A: We are unable to comment on this as you are referring to a matter which is over nine years old.
Q: And could that reason, or reasons, could it be still why Zimbabwe has to pay in US dollars, when we have bond notes in circulation?
A: Again, as per our response in the first question – we rely on financial institutions to collect payments for MultiChoice.
Q: Against this background, DStv customers complain of repeats on your channels, that the cost do not justify the number of repeats. What measures are in place to address this?
A: Repeats give people a second or third chance to see something they might have missed. It’s a standard practice with pay TV channels around the world for channels to have repeats. The majority of channels on DStv also play across television screens around the world, so they experience repeats the same way we do. It’s also worth noting that the amount of programmes produced by film and TV studios is not enough to make up a single channel (for example, a single 24-hour channel needs 8 760 hours of programming but only 1 200 hours is produced, and the gap is then filled with repeats).
But, with that being said, MultiChoice is committed to consistently improving our DStv customer experience – and as such we’ve made a concerted effort to reduce the number of repeats across our channels. Just recently we made an announcement that we would be merging some of our channels in order to reduce the number of repeats. This along with other channel improvements have been undertaken to ensure we respond to customer feedback.
While we can’t do away with all repeats, we plan to cut down on the volume and introduce as much fresh content as possible. We’re also going to help our customers find more shows they might like, but never knew existed. Our focus is to bring our customers the best entertainment possible. We have a lot of fresh new content on DStv for our customers on all packages. Our Premium customers get to see the latest and freshest content first. Channels such as M-Net, VUZU Amp, FOX, BBC First and kykNET première never-before seen shows and movies every single week. Some of these shows are shown on DStv a few hours after they’ve premièred in the US and the UK. Just recently, we have had a number of brand new shows which premièred on DStv – like the new and unique reality show, Married at First Sight South Africa which premièred on Lifetime (DStv channel 131). On BBC Brit (DStv channel 120), there’s a new show called Reggie Yates: Extreme South Africa.
MultiChoice remains the biggest investor in local content on the African continent with locally-produced shows that are all shown on DStv channels ranging from Zambezi Magic to Vuzu, Africa Magic channels and Mzansi Magic. We also have a number of resources available to help our customers find content they would like to watch – there is a series and movies calendar available for our Compact and Premium customers available on DStv.com. There is also a highlights reel that plays on Channel 100 and our Facebook and Twitter accounts publish daily highlights.
Q: Is MultiChoice Zimbabwe an indigenous company, as per the country’s investment guidelines? If it is, why then does it not accept the operating currency of its host country?
A: Skynet (Pvt)Ltd t/a MultiChoice Zimbabwe is a wholly owned Zimbabwean company that operates under a franchise agreement with MultiChoice Africa.
Q: Are we likely to see a migration to pay-per-view platform? If so, when? If not, why not?
A: MultiChoice Africa’s business model, like many other Pay TV operators, is to buy complete channels from various channel providers across the world and package these into different bouquets/packages. MultiChoice has to pay for all the channels on its packages in full, every month for every customer. To put this in context, the DStv service is almost like the purchase of a newspaper which is paid for in full and in advance whether one reads the whole paper or sections thereof. Each DStv package comprises a selection of channels which are paid for a complete month or multiples of complete months in advance.
Pay-per-view services have very limited “application” in the rest of the world. Some Pay TV operators that also produce their own content offer pay-per-view services for certain events such as boxing. Other services that are similar to pay-per-view, such as video-on-demand (VOD), are also offered but these services require a significant amount of satellite bandwidth. DStv currently has a pay-per-view value-added service, DStv BoxOffice, that allows DStv customers with a personal video recording (PVR) functionality and an active PVR service subscription to rent and view the latest blockbuster movies anytime, anywhere on any device.
Q: Any other comments that you might think would be of interest to our readers.
A: We have spent two decades and an enormous amount of time and resources investing in Zimbabwe, creating jobs, training and developing people and helping small businesses related to our industry to grow and thrive making a significant social and economic contribution to the industry. As a pioneer in pay television, we also remain committed to the Zimbabwean customers and to finding ways to improve our customer experience and viewing and to putting our loyal customers at the heart of our business. As such we have continuously launched new innovative and exciting products which are at the cutting edge of worldwide television and technology trends and firsts for the pay TV industry in Africa – including high definition (HD), PVR decoders, Box Office, Catch Up and more recently the DStv Now service which enables customers to watch DStv programming on the go.
