NigComSat Hands Over DTH Platform to PPTV

After a series of update meetings between the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat Ltd) Board and Platinum Plus Television Ltd (PPTV) management on June 5 and August 8, the Management of NIGCOMSAT Ltd recently formalised the lease of the Direct-To-Home (DTH) facility to an indigenous investor PPTV, through a handing over ceremony performed by Abimbola Alale, acting managing director, and Mr. Dumebi Kachikwu, PPTV’s Chairman.

Abimbola Alale said that the agreement with PPTV was signed in November, 2013.

After which PPTV carried out a technical audit to ascertain the workability of the system vis a vis the desired services to be delivered.

Alale said, “Having been satisfied with the process, we decided to hand over the platform to PPTV today”

Kachikwu thanked the Ag. MD and the NIGCOMSAT team for this exercise, stating that the platform will definitely make a difference to Nigerians because PPTV will leverage on the NigComSat-1R capacity and DTH Head end to provide triple play services for subscribers.

He admitted that while PPTV is the service provider, NigComSat is the brand, which we are all proud of.

According to a statement by Sonny Aragba-Akpore, head, Corporate Communication, NigComSat Ltd, Kachikwu said that PPTV is already holding talks with major telecommunications operators like MTN, Etisalat and others who will key into this project to provide voice communication to their subscribers while the other aspects of video and data transmission shall be delivered by PPTV.

He explained that an assembly plant to manufacture the setup boxes shall be put in place to complement the technology that is on ground. Indeed prototypes of the set up boxes are already in place.

He said, this shall take off in a matter of weeks because the equipment has already been imported.

Kachikwu also said that his team, in collaboration with NIGCOMSAT staff has packaged a module for the educational sector for which talks are in progress with the Federal Government to take the services across secondary and tertiary institutions across the country riding on the NigComSat-1R satellite.

Responding to Alale’s presentation, Kachickwu agreed with her that the partnership would benefit greatly from the optimal utilisation of the existing expertise of NIGCOMSAT staff trained on the functionality of the DTH Headend.

The ceremony closed with an assurance from PPTV that  services shall be delivered before the end of the year. This is contrary to the insinuation in a newspaper report recently that the DTH agreement with Netlink Technologies had collapsed. There is no such agreement.