Nigeria’s leading pay-TV company has apologized to subscribers for irregular service and appealed for understanding as efforts continue to resolve the week-long strike by Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) employees.
NITEL employees shut down major switches and transmission lines, including the SAT-3, as a protest because they are owed wages by their employer, Transnational.
HiTV is one of the companies that depends on NITEL, especially for its fixed lines and Internet infrastructure, to provide services. “HiTV had to contend with long delays in activating subscribers because its activation process is linked to NITEL’s SAT-3 cable infrastructure, which links Nigeria to the rest of the world,” Managing Director and CEO Toyin Subair said in a statement on Tuesday.
The TV service provider knows that customers have had a difficult time receiving service because of the strike at NITEL, he said.
The activation of subscriber accounts had taken less than a minute, but because of the strike, activation has been taking up to two hours because the process begins in Lagos and goes through the international system, which is linked to Sat 3, before sending signals into the customer’s system.
