A court in Nigeria has fined Africa’s largest pay-TV service provider, Multichoice, N150 million (approximately KSh13 million) for frequent unlawful and unprocedural hiking of package prices for Gotv and Dstv without improving the value of their services. The ruling has also ordered Multichoice Nigeria to offer its subscribers a one-month free subscription on the packages they are currently on.
On April 24, Multichoice Nigeria announced a 25% increase in the subscription costs for its DStv and GOtv packages. This marked the second time in six months that Multichoice Nigeria was raising subscription prices, with the previous increase being at least 19%, with no relative improvement in programming.
The company was barred from implementing the new tariffs following a petition that was filed by consumer bodies calling out the media firm for exploiting consumers. Further, Multichoice Nigeria has been warned against frequent upward price revisions in a bid to control multi-nationals operating in the West African country and take advantage of their monopolistic nature.
