Broadband wars threaten DSTV
Affordable, uncapped broadband is here and I, for one, am thrilled. Not just because it means I can forget about hefty monthly Internet bills, or that I can now surf the Internet in all its glory, but also because, in my house, it could give DSTV a run for its money.
That’s right, DSTV, the monopoly pay-TV provider.
I’ve been a DSTV subscriber for a good number of years and on the back of its recent subscription increase I’m starting to question its value. DSTV is expensive. It provides linear, old-school entertainment with no choice. It’s also mediocre at the best of times.
As a “Premium” subscriber I now pay R529 a month for a DSTV subscription.
For this fairly large outlay we get an impressive 82 channels delivered to our television screen. Despite that we rarely watch even 10 of those channels with any regularity, and even then we’re subjected to countless re-runs and three-year old UK gameshows.
The sport coverage is generally good – the original reason we subscribed – and the children-friendly channels keep the younger members of our household entertained, but we’re still paying in excess of R500 a month for the privilege of watching just a handful of channels.
We could downgrade to one of DSTV’s Select or Compact packages, which are significantly cheaper, but they really don’t cut it for us. The choice of children’s channels on those packages is terrible, they don’t even include channels such as MNet and are packed with free-to-air channels that we could watch just as well without a decoder.
But the real bugbear, as others have pointed out, is that as a consumer there isn’t an option to select the channels I would like to watch and pay for just those. I have to pay the premium price or dump DSTV completely.
And that option is becoming increasingly attractive. Thanks to the current uncapped broadband wars, getting content from the Internet is now significantly cheaper than ever before. For as little as R200 a month I can now have access to an uncapped ADSL line and download as much audio and video content as I like. And, more importantly, watch it when I want to watch it.
One of the other reasons we originally subscribed to DSTV was for some of the children’s programming. And even that is becoming redundant. My eight-year old son already spends more time playing (child-friendly) games online than he does watching television. Given a choice between the Internet and TV there is no competition for him: the Internet.
And largely I feel the same. I’d sooner listen to music or watch a documentary I’ve downloaded than have to restlessly flick through the channels looking for something to watch.
The thing is that with the Internet I have a choice. I choose my favourite podcasts, video casts or TV shows (all legal of course), download them and watch them when I have the time, not when the service provider decides I ought to watch it.
I’m not saying that cancelling my DSTV subscription would be without sacrifice. There would be live sport that I would miss (although the Indian Premier League live stream on YouTube suggests this might not be the case for much longer) and there would be some favourite documentaries that I would lose out on. But in the end I would be saving close to R6 500 a year in DSTV subscription fees.
The Internet, on the other hand, is costing me less and less every month and giving me more and more choice and value.
Like my son, if I had to choose between the Internet and DSTV for my future entertainment it would be no contest: Internet all the way.
Broadband wars threaten DSTV << Discussion
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Free 10 Mbps ADSL upgrades considered
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