The Digital Switch Over was on Thursday, 29th April launched in Lagos amidst pomp and pageantry at an event which saw the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed and the Lagos State governor, Babajide SanwoOlu present.
The platform aptly branded FreeTV it is said would beam 60 Choice channels including sports, music and movies to Lagosians along other Value Added Services such as enforcement & Collection of TV Licenses, Premium PayTV channels, Push Video on Demand, Information Services and Audience Measurement.
The Lagos launch took over from where the national coverage stopped about six months ago at Osun state with a promise from the Minister that all states of the federation will be covered in the second phase before December 2021. The roll out according to the Minister has five states ticked off the list and they include Plateau, Kaduna, Enugu, Kwara, Osun as well as Abuja the Federal Capital Territory. With Lagos done, it moves on to Kano on June 3 and Rivers state on July 8.
With FreeTV, the NBC says users do not need to convert their TV sets meaning that your regular TV will do the job perfectly. All you’ll need is the Set-Top-Box which will be connected to your TV set via a satellite/ antenna cable connected to the back Of your Set top box. Alternatively, you can still watch TV if you have a built-in TV digital tuner.
The FreeTv Set-Top-Box also makes use of and supports the DVB-T2 standard which is the next standard development in terms of Digital Broadcasting Terrestrial standards.
How well does FreeTV stake up in competitiveness compared to other satellite TV providers?
While the platform promises to offer Lagosians 60 channels and a caveat which states that the channel offerings may differ from location to location, a check on it’s website shows that the platform currently has about 26 channels listed across 5 sections namely Lifestyle, News & Business, Sports, Music and Nollywood.
With the channel line up anyone can take a guess as to how competitive it will be beside other pay satellite brands like DSTV, Startimes and GOTv.
From the look of things, the channel line up lists some already regular stations. For the lifestyle category stations like TVC Entertainment and Silverbird Television, Rave TV are some regular known names with a few exceptions such as GET TV and ONYX TV. For News and Business, the platform parades all of the regular and known names such as Channels Tv, AIT National, NTA News 24, NTA Parliament, ITV, Galaxy Television, TVC News with the only exciting channel being CNBC.
For Sports, the platform has only NTA Sports and Kwese Free Sports, two channels that will doubtfully offer football lovers any exclusive airing of their favourite foreign leagues. To be clear, one major reason why many individuals purchase premium bouquets on the already existing providers such as DSTV is the exclusive league offers which enables them to have access to watch the latest international leagues. For this, Nigerians wait to see just how far the platform will go.
For Music, it lists Kennis Music, 1Music and Dexterity and hopefully these will offer music lovers a rich line up of contemporary content that can keep the young generation glued to their screens.
In terms of movies, Nigerians could be expecting some premium content with the three Nollywood focused channels namely Nolly Africa, African Movies Network and Correct TV.
One move that may enhance FreeTV’s competitiveness when compared with other pay TV platforms could be the recent move initiated by the Federal government wherein it directed GoTv and StarTimes to stop self-carriage by the end of June this year. This according to the Minister of Information is part of the efforts to make the digital switchover (DSO) proposition viable.
In conclusion, with its offer of a cheap yearly subscription cost, it is doubtful if Nigerians can really expect premium content line up but hopefully, the platform will continue to grow and expand its offerings and Nigerians may eventually begin to heave a sigh of relief and not have cough out high monthly fees for satellite pay TV anymore.