On Tuesday night, subscribers of GoTV, a prepaid satellite cable service popular among football fans in Nigeria, faced significant frustration when multiple channels abruptly disappeared. Reports from PUNCH Metro indicate that this outage prompted many customers to seek compensation from Multichoice, the parent company of GoTV, during interviews on Wednesday.
Football enthusiasts were particularly eager to catch their favorite teams in action as the Champions League resumed. However, viewers relying on GoTV were left disappointed when all football channels, including SS BLITZ Africa, SS Football Africa, SS La Liga Africa, SS Select 1, SS Select 2, and ESPN, vanished from their screens. In addition, several other channels, such as M-Net Movies 4, ROK, Africa Magic Epic, TNT Africa, Al Jazeera, CNN International, Arise News, TVC News Nigeria, and Channels Television, also went offline without restoration at the time of reporting.
An investigation by PUNCH Metro revealed that the disruption was linked to a severe power failure affecting the Intelsat 33e satellite, which services regions including Europe and Africa. This technical failure, reported on Monday by Developing Telecoms, led to widespread service interruptions, impacting customers like Multichoice.
Many football fans expressed their outrage over the service disruption, criticizing Multichoice for not promptly communicating the issue. A viewing center owner in Ojodu Berger shared his disbelief, stating, “I was shocked when I couldn’t find any of the sports channels. I thought there might be an issue with the antenna, but the problem persisted. It was a catastrophe.”
Another subscriber, Adebola Oluwatosin, a dedicated Real Madrid fan, voiced his frustration over the situation, especially after purchasing a subscription just prior to the outage. “I bought fuel to watch the match, only to find that all the sports channels had disappeared. They need to compensate us for this disruption,” he asserted.
In response to the complaints, MultiChoice spokesperson Caroline Oghuma stated that the company is actively working to restore services for all customers, acknowledging the temporary disruption caused by the technical issue with Intelsat.
Written By; Christopher Emuakpeje