DSTV says it may consider pay-as-you-consume option

Multichoice Nigeria, parent company of DStv, says it may consider the pay-as-you-consume (PAYC) payment option in the future.

The proposed pay-as-you-consume pricing scheme allows users pay according to their effective resource consumption excluding interference.

Guardian reports that John Ugbe, managing director of Multichoice Nigeria, made this statement on Friday on the sidelines of the ongoing Digital Dialogue conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

“Pay-as-you-consume is something we may consider, if it is technologically possible and the business model supports it, we will,” he said.

At present, subscribers can suspend their subscriptions twice a year when they are out of town.

Most subscribers have called for the introduction of the PAYC option, saying the current fixed plan payment is a rip-off.

In 2017, Caroline Oghuma, head of public relations of Multichoice, said the payment option is not obtainable in TV business.

“Pay TV operation is not like the telecom version where you pay for the amount of airtime you want to use. Pay-as-you-go, as believed by some customers, is not obtainable in the pay TV business,” she had said.

Martin Mabutho, general manager, marketing and sales, MultiChoice Nigeria, had also said: “Pay-per-view is normally used when a special event is being broadcast. I will give you example of the boxing bout of Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor; that we viewed to our subscribers at no additional cost.

“In America where pay-per-view facility is being offered, people paid $100, only for the fight. The next day if you don’t have subscription, you don’t see anything. For that reason, we don’t think it is a viable thing for us to do. We don’t believe that our market and can handle that.”

Companies in the telecommunications sector had argued that it was not possible to operate per-second billing until Globacom changed the trend in 2003.