Uganda reports 2.1m pay-TV subs
March 7, 2019
By Chris Forrester
According to Uganda’s telecoms regulator (the Uganda Communications Commission) the country now has 2.1 million subscribers to pay-TV, and up from 1.4 million in a year.
The Commission puts the growth down to last year’s World Cup which helped boost pay-TV take-up by 47 per cent between July and September last year.
“The number of pay-TV subscribers grew from 1,469,129 to 2,165,293 reflecting a 47 per cent growth subscription,” the Commission reported.
However, there’s considerable volatility in the actual numbers. For example, last year, between December 2017 (when the total stood at 1.3 million) it then suffered a major fall by March 2018 to just 1.1 million.
The numbers are mostly split between DStv and StarTimes Group although Uganda has 8 pay-TV service providers covering satellite and digital terrestrial (DStv, Zuku, Azam, Star Times, Kwese and GOtv among others).
Aldrine Nsubuga, StarTimes/VP for marketing, said the World Cup was a major driver of growth in the subscription segment, saying their numbers jumped by over 500,000 subscribers in the period. At the turn of 2017, we had about 800,000 subscribers but by close of 2018, we had hit 1.5 million subscribers with over 1.3 million active subscribers,” he said.