News Highlights:
- GoTV subscribers, particularly football fans, were frustrated on Tuesday night when multiple key channels, including sports networks, disappeared during the highly anticipated return of the UEFA Champions League.
- Subscribers criticized the company for poor communication and are now demanding compensation or subscription extensions to cover the lost service days.
Football-loving Nigerians using GoTV, a popular prepaid satellite cable service, were left frustrated on Tuesday night when multiple channels, including key sports channels, suddenly disappeared.
The outage occurred during the much-anticipated return of the UEFA Champions League, causing a wave of disappointment among fans eager to watch their favorite European clubs in action.
Several GoTV subscribers, interviewed on Wednesday, expressed their anger and demanded compensation from MultiChoice, GoTV’s parent company, for the unexpected service disruption.
Channels such as SS BLITZ Africa, SS Football Africa, SS La Liga Africa, SS Select 1, SS Select 2, and ESPN were among those that went off-air, depriving viewers of the highly anticipated matches.
In addition to sports channels, other popular stations like M-Net Movies 4, ROK, Africa Magic Epic, TNT Africa, Al Jazeera, CNN International, Arise News, TVC News Nigeria, and Channels Television also vanished on Monday, with services yet to be restored as of Wednesday.
The disruption was traced to a power failure on Intelsat 33e, a geostationary satellite that provides coverage across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of the Asia-Pacific.
According to a report by Developing Telecoms, the satellite’s failure on Saturday caused a widespread service outage, affecting all customers reliant on its signal. MultiChoice, a key client of Intelsat, was among those impacted.
Football fans, who were eager to watch Tuesday’s Champions League matches, voiced their frustration over MultiChoice’s lack of communication. Sanjo, a football viewing centre owner in Ojodu Berger area of Lagos, described the chaos caused by the missing channels.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this. I use both GoTV and DSTV to show games on Champions League nights, but when I couldn’t find any of the sports channels, I thought it was a problem with the antenna,” he explained.
“I tried everything, but the issue persisted. There was no message to customers about the disruption – it was a complete disaster.”
Another subscriber, Adebola Oluwatosin, a devoted Real Madrid fan, was equally outraged. Having paid N13,900 for a recent subscription, he was disappointed when all the sports channels disappeared just as he prepared to watch the Real Madrid vs. Borussia Dortmund match.
“I even bought fuel for the generator because there was no power, only to find out that the channels were gone. If I knew there was an issue, I would have gone to a friend’s house who uses DSTV. We need compensation for this,” Oluwatosin demanded.
In response to the situation, Caroline Oghuma, spokesperson for MultiChoice, confirmed on Wednesday that the company was working to restore services as quickly as possible.
“We are experiencing a temporary disruption due to a technical issue with one of our satellite providers, Intelsat,” Oghuma stated, assuring customers that efforts were underway to resolve the issue.
As subscribers await the restoration of their channels, many are calling on MultiChoice to extend their subscription periods to account for the lost days of service.
The company has yet to announce any compensation plan.
**News Credit: The PUNCH
