Subscribers to the new Digital Satellite Television (DStv) have protested against its new tariff hike, which takes effect today.

They called on the Federal Government to prevail on South Africa’s Multichoice, owners of the platform, to discard the plan.

While Multichoice blamed the price hike on the current economic situation in the country, a subscriber, Tayo Adedugbe disclosed that only in May 2017, it increased its price across all packages. “And now, about 14 months after, it has announced another price hike on its DStv platform,” he said.

He lamented that even if the firm is struggling to operate as it claimed, it doesn’t justify pushing the cost to subscribers. “We just won’t take it,” he declared.

An engineer, Nduka, who is a subscriber on the Family package platform, cautioned the firm against “inflicting pains on the masses. I see them losing customers because there is no money in the economy.

Though, there has not been any official statement, but the South African firm, replied to an online enquiry.

The firm, through its Twitter Handle, @DStvng, explained: “The price adjustment was necessitated by the escalating costs to business.

These, it said, include satellite costs, maintenance of network, channel and operational costs.

It added: “The DStv cost structure has marketing costs and channel costs. We have however managed to restrict the price adjustment as much as possible.”

Investigations showed that the South African PayTV firm has about 11 million subscribers in 50 African states, with Nigeria having about 4 million of them as of last year.

Though it increased the prices on the digital satellite platform, Multichoice, however, slashed the prices on its terrestrial platform, GOtv.

In the various messages sent to subscribers, those on GOtv Max package would enjoy a price slash from N3, 800 to N3, 200, while the prices on GOtv Plus, GOtv Value and GOtv Lite packages remain fixed at N1, 900, N1, 250 and N400 respectively.

However, messages to DStv subscribers showed that customers on DStv Premium package would pay additional N1, 100, moving from N14, 700 to N15, 800.

Customers on Compact Plus, which currently pay N9, 900, would add N750 to it, making it N10, 650. The Compact customers will also pay extra N500, from N6, 300 to N6, 800.

The Family package also increased by N200, from N3, 800 to N4, 000. Those on the Access package would henceforth pay N2000 from the previous N1, 900.

A typical message sent to a family package subscriber reads: “Dear customer, please be advised that DStv Family subscription will change to N4000 from August 1, 2018. Thank you for your continued support.”

“The Federal Government, through the appropriate agencies should urgently intervene to stop the hike,” the consumers lamented.

•Culled from a Guardian report