Dear Multi-Choice,
The past two weeks, my family and I experienced first-hand how it feels to stay without DSTV in one’s home.
Since Zambia undertook the digitalisation exercise and all TV stations went digital, my family made a conscious decision to access all television stations of our choice through the DSTV.
Accordingly, we exclusively invested in a DSTV Satellite dish and a DSTV Explorer decoder to enable us enjoy DSTV services.
This investment was not cheap but we felt was worth it as it would allow all family interests and needs to be satisfied via the various arrays of programming that DSTV brings.
However due to economic reasons beyond our control, the past two weeks we have not had access to the DSTV services as our subscription had expired. All DSTV channels, both radio and TV got blocked.
What remained was channel 100.
This became our solace and only option.
But what is on channel 100? Nothing. This is one useless channels that serves no purpose and is only good for testing if your decoder or dish is working.
Channel 100 has no documentaries, no adverts, no news, no sport and no any form of entertainment, education or information. It is noise with pictures.
This was the channel that my family was subjected to for the past two weeks. We had a useless DSTV dish and decoder that could not even tell us the weather or about the riots taking place around Zambia or the impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump.
Is this the life that Multi Choice Zambia or DSTV envisages its customers that have satellite dishes and decoders to be living in the absence of subscription?
Does it not matter that a family whose subscription has expired still has a working dish and decoder and that like mine might not have access to any TV or movie house for their entertainment?
Does it not matter that for years my family had religiously subscribed to your services and have become dependent for news and entertainment on DSTV?
How much does it cost you to leave open one news channel, one entertainment channel including our local ZNBC for your clients to still remain serviced?
How much does it cost to have your channel 100 connect to a select news channel during news time or sport channel during a sporting event? How many of your customers, like me, have continued to stay in the dark because their DSTV subscription has expired?
We cannot afford to have 5 dishes hanging on our roofs or walls just to be able to have TV signals coming through our TVs.
I would like to appeal to your team to reciprocate the loyalty that some of us have given your company by sticking to your dish and decoders when the state of our economy including ZESCO load shedding is telling us to think otherwise.
The habit of blacking out all channels when the subscription expires need to stop. If we had a choice, we would bring back your decoders and Dishes so you liquidate them and give us back our cash.
I hope the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and the Ministry of Information (MIBS) will take keen interest in the number of Zambians losing out of their TV information services because of this digitalisation of services.
Your sincerely,
Mthoniswa Banda
