TSTV has not infringed on the copyright of Bein Sports and Turner Broadcasting which owns CNN, according to Madu Ugo, Head of Corporate Communication for TSTV.
Ugo was reacting to report that the two international content providers, have accused his company of infringing their exclusive distribution rights to certain television programmes.
He said “Our attention has been drawn to memos circulating on social media claiming TSTV illegally used the logo of Bein Sport and Tuner on its website. We wish to state that this is malicious and false. The memos circulating on social media are FAKE. Both letters were packaged in a single brown envelope and was hurriedly dropped at our office by an unidentified person.
“TSTV has a non-disclosure agreement with Beni Sports and Turner to air their stations on TSTV satellite Television. The Nigeria Broadcasting Commission team were also in Qatar to confirm our agreement with Bein Sports and also have a copy of our agreement with Bein Sport.
Nigerians should kindly disregard the documents because they are frivolous. TSTV is prepared to offer affordable and excellent digital services to Nigerians and Africans completely hitch free.”
Meanwhile, TSTV said its newly inaugurated pay TV, TSTV Africa, will begin commercial operation on Nov. 1.
Mr Bright Echefu, managing director, said that at least 5,000 decoders TSTV would be released to the public next week for free, adding that it would use the first set of decoders with one month free subscription to test run its services.
“Commercialization of our decoders will resume officially on Nov. 1 and by that time, every part of Nigeria would have TSTV decoders for people to buy.
“We are releasing about one million which can go round and our target for the first quarter is one million units.
“In every quarter we will bring one million units and we are targeting four million units within the next one year.
“I can tell you categorically that some decoders will be released next week for Nigerians to test and we are going to cover the 36 states of the federation.
“These decoders are going to be free and it close to 5,000 units to test and that will last for two weeks,’’ he said.
Echefu disclosed that the delay in releasing the decoders to the public was to ensure that dealers were properly scrutinized so that the decoders do not fall into the wrong hands.
He explained that the decoder would be sold to Nigerians at a subsidized rate.
According to him, the landing cost of the decoder is N28,000.
“We don’t want a situation where someone would pick our decoders and dump them somewhere.
“That is why we are very careful because of competition.
“ We have received well over 6,000 applications and it has been overwhelming processing these people; but so far, we have been able to accredit more than 748 dealers and we have received applications from more than 3,000 of them.