Subscribers, particularly football-loving Nigerians using GoTV, a prepaid satellite cable service, were frustrated on Tuesday night when multiple channels suddenly disappeared.
PUNCH Metro reports that the outage experienced by the subscribers on Tuesday led many customers to demand compensation from Multichoice, GoTV’s parent company, during separate interviews on Wednesday.
Several football fans watching on cable TV were eager to witness their favourite clubs take to the pitch as the Champions League, a popular game where clubs from Europe showcase their skill and determination, returned on Tuesday night.
However, some football fans, especially those watching on GoTV, were disappointed when all the football channels on the cable service suddenly disappeared.
Our correspondent observed that sports channels like SS BLITZ Africa, SS Football Africa, SS La Liga Africa, SS Select 1, SS Select 2, and ESPN had vanished.
Several other channels, including M-Net Movies 4, ROK, Africa Magic Epic, TNT Africa, Al Jazeera, CNN International, Arise News, TVC News Nigeria, and Channels Television, also went off on Monday and had not been restored as the time this report was filed.
PUNCH Metro’s findings on Wednesday revealed that the Intelsat 33e, a geostationary high-throughput satellite serving Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of the Asia-Pacific, experienced a severe power failure on Saturday.
According to a report on Monday by Developing Telecoms, an online platform operated by a UK-based company, the failure caused a significant disruption, cutting service to all customers. Meanwhile, our correspondent learnt that MultiChoice is among the affected customers.
While many football fans, eager to watch their favourite clubs in action on Tuesday night, were left outraged by the service interruption, others expressed their disappointment to our correspondent, criticising MultiChoice for failing to communicate the disruption promptly.
A football viewing centre owner in Ojodu Berger told PUNCH Metro on Wednesday that his customers were disappointed when they couldn’t watch their teams on Tuesday.
“I’ve never been in this situation before. I use both GoTV and DSTV. On Champions League nights, there are usually many matches, so I use GoTV to show the games that my customers want to watch.
“I was shocked when I couldn’t find any of the sports channels. I thought there might be an issue with the antenna, so I tried changing the location, but the problem persisted.
“I checked the menu for any messages to customers about the disruption, but there was nothing. It was a catastrophe,” Sanjo lamented.
Another subscriber, Adebola Oluwatosin, who identified himself as a devoted Real Madrid fan, while demanding compensation from MultiChoice for the service failure, described his experience on Tuesday as disturbing.
“If I knew something was wrong with them (GoTV), I would stay with my friend who owns a DSTV to see the Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund match.
“I bought fuel because there was no power supply at the time, only to find that all the sports channels had disappeared. I had just paid for a subscription of 13,900.
“They need to compensate us. Since this is a monthly subscription, will they extend the expiration date to account for the days the channels were unavailable? We need answers,” Oluwatosin demanded.
When contacted on Wednesday, the company’s spokesperson, Caroline Oghuma, stated that MultiChoice was working to restore services for all its customers.
“We are experiencing a temporary disruption in our services due to a technical issue with one of our satellite providers, Intelsat.
