By  Prince  Osuagwu

Nigeria’s inability to meet the International Telecommunications Union, ITU’s June deadline for countries to migrate to digital broadcasting has become a source of  worry to many Nigerian television lovers considering the grave implications, particularly the signal interference it is capable of causing.

Star Times Chairman Xin Xing Pang

So when the Chairman of Star Times, Mr Xin Xing Pang – a man said to have played a major role in Tanzania’s historic migration to digital broadcasting before other African countries, visited Nigeria for the celebration of his company’s five years of existence in Nigeria, it became an opportunity for Hi-Tech to ask him a few questions.

The encounter was interesting, particularly when talking and hearing from Mr Pang was only through an interpreter. 

Enjoy the encounter:

Star Times @5: The journey so far?

Nigeria  is a wonderful place to do business. Generally in the last five years the company has grown in leaps and bounds. We are today one of the largest in the pay digital TV market in the country. Currently our Digital Terrestrial Television, DTT, platform is in 46 locations at the moment.

We have covered up to 80 percent of the states in Nigeria. We are only out of coverage in two states and those are the two most volatile states at the moment. Meanwhile, last year we launched our Digital Direct to Homes (DTH) which covers the entire country.

However, while we are growing, we are also helping the Nigerian society to grow as much as we can. The tax revenue we have generated to the government coffers is in the region of N4 billion. We have introduced more Nigerian local channels with local contents. Our staff is also increasing as we have about 1,000 staff members; We have also been training and retraining them for better efficiency and sound service delivery.

Our subscriber base is now up to 2.6 million in the country and that has been achieved within the past 5 years. We have also been awarded as the most popular operator in the country in three consecutive years.

Seems as if business is so smooth; are there any challenges?

There’s no business without challenges. For us, the time it takes to get approval to deploy our Digital Terrestrial TV, DTT network connection is the major challenge. The process of getting license and approval to deploy one DTT sometimes take up to six months and we feel that this is rather too slow.

For instance, we have the plan to set up to 16 DTT locations in the country and The Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC must grant us frequency per location. So if it takes six months, you can see that no much progress would be made. Meanwhile, in order to operate in some areas we need to be granted licence to commence operations.

Suffice to say also, that we suffered the devaluation of the naira due to the falling exchange rate because most of our content providers are paid in dollars and this has created some problem for us.

Even with Star Times alliance with NTA, Nigeria still fails in digital migration?

Digital migration in the TV industry is not just a simple process as some of you might think, it is like a huge chain that needs adjustments. It involves quite a lot of open information and consultations with industry stakeholders, different market and entities. This means that all the stakeholders in the process must participate in the process because of their different demands, self-interests and what they should take away from the migration.

For StarTimes, we are just a company, what we can do at the moment is the promotion of the digital migration which we have been doing. We cannot make any decision or fully participate in the decision making process. However there are strange happenings in the digital TV market in the country: Some companies are presently operating illegally.

Can there still be any salvation?

Yes. That is if every hand comes on deck. For us, we started business in Africa in 2002 and in Nigeria since 2009. We have not stopped promoting digital migration in the Nigerian market and for StarTimes we have already prepared ourselves for the digital migration.

The only issue now is that we cannot decide for the government when they should complete the migration. We wish that the migration can start as soon as possible because we will all benefit immensely from it. The strategy is to gradually begin switching off the analogue system state by state starting from Jos.

Which way forward

We would advise the government to create some legislation to stop the importation of analogue TV sets into the country. It is only when this is done that the digitalization of the industry can be realised. Also the Nigerian consumers need to be educated more on the benefits of digital migration.

There’s also the need for government to subsidise the set-up  boxes as it is done in other countries so that the common people can gain access to digital TV in the country. There must also be a dedicated fund created for the actualisation of digital transformation, in addition to a professional team which knows the technology, management and operations of digital broadcasting.  These conditions are really indispensable for digital TV to thrive.

Is in-house production of content in digital TV possible?

Actually our role in the Nigerian digital TV is as signal distributor and secondly role in the Nigerian market is the pay TV operator. As signal distributor we are supposed to provide high quality services to the content producers, that is free-to air TV stations, without discrimination.

We have always ensured that we provide high professional TV quality in Nigeria and to the local content producers. We also collaborate with local content providers as we are preparing the launch of movie channels that would centre on Nollywood.

Corporate Social Responsibility?

StarTimes as an enterprise in the country has been involved in doing genuine business in compliance with the laws of the land like paying our taxes regularly and secondly we have tried to provide high quality product and services to our customers; and thirdly we have been providing support to vulnerable communities which we often don’t want to mention in the media.

Before 2010, the price of the pay TV services was on the higher side with subscription also very high and unaffordable and with the entrance of StarTimes into the market a lot of Nigerians can now afford digital TV services. We go into the rural areas without business prospects, just to fulfil our responsibility to the environment we are doing business in. By all these, we forced our competitors to lower their prices. We are most innovative and really have contributed a lot to the Nigerian society.