Timely advice to Multi-Choice 

By Daily Revelation Editor

During a very difficult period such as the one the country is going through, businesses will actually need to adjust quickly in order to survive or even navigate this very difficult terrain the country is going through.

Any failure or stubbornness in failing to adjust may actually lead some of these companies to close or get bruised badly actually such that it will be very difficult for them to recover. We know that one of the companies which Zambians have both come to love and loathe is Multi-Choice. Millions of Zambians will agree that there is simply no existence of TV without a subscription to Multi-Choice as it has now become part of their everyday lives. But as with other things, not everything is likable about DSTV, as Zambians have generally raised complaints about the company’s propensity to every year hike the subscription fees for the consumers using every trick they can afford to find in the book, especially around the ‘Kwacha depreciation’ to the United States Dollar and other major convertible currencies.

But while the rates have been going up, the programming hasn’t generally improved. And even before this crippling loadshedding period came on the scene, many were already moving away from the pay television network. We can with a greater amount of certainty say that the heightened load schedule, which is now at 21-hours per day has forced many more actually to keep away. Of course, the company may argue that their services are not restricted to traditional television alone as customers can also watch live stream via their phones and other gadgets. However, the same of course cannot be compared to enjoying the services via television, owing to among other issues including poor network services by mobile providers to ensure impeccable live streaming.

Secondly, this loadshedding schedule has not only affected traditional television but has extended to the phones and other gadgets as well, especially with the unpredictable energy supply which is only available for a few hours if not minutes on any given day.

Therefore, failure to adjust to the this terrain will make it harder for companies like Multi-Choice to survive. The best any company that is in their position can do given the circumstances is try to win back or retain customers at all cost. And in doing so, they surely can’t maintain the same subscription rates they are at right now. Let them consider significantly reducing these rates to retain their customers while working to get the others on board. Maintaining the rates is surely not the right way to go about it as they may actually risk folding ultimately.

The period the country is in cannot be said to be normal. Companies need to actually go out of their way to survive when operating under such a harsh environment. It’s even more difficult actually when the country in question which is being affected by loadshedding is Zambia, because authorities actually can’t be trusted to tell the truth. Today they will say that the load schedule will be 17 hours daily, tomorrow however, they will come up with another story saying because of some inter-connector fault somewhere in Namibia mulfuncitioning, therefore Zesco can only provide three hours of electricity at most to consumers in residential areas. Totally contradictory points of views from government officials in the same industry. One day the permanent secretary Energy Peter Mumba is saying the Inter-connector has been resolved and expects normalcy to be restored in power generation, but the next minute, the utility company he surpervises is contradicting him and saying the Inter-connector is still down.

In the end, the lies end up worsening the already worsened situation.