Bakery in Maldives selling Airtel dish

Source: Minivan News

Ahmed, started using Airtel two months ago. He bought his receiver from a bakery in Male’; others buy theirs during trips to India by providing the name of an Indian person, along with their contact telephone number. “If Airtel de-activates our dish, there is always Babu who will call them up and shout. After all, they sold to an Indian and they are cutting off his entertainment.”

But the monopolistic company MediaNet, which is charging very high prices from consumers, is trying to stop Airtel from being used in the Maldives. The company, which is owned by people close to the former regime, and wealthy tycoons such as Qasim Ibrahim and ADK Ahmed Nashid, are trying to block the freedom and low cost entertainment that Maldivians are now receiving through Airtel dishes. Their argument is Airtel broadcasts some channels for which MediaNet has an exclusive broadcasting license. They say they pay huge amounts as annual fees for these exclusive licenses. But the concealed story behind MediaNet is they do not have sufficient infrastructure to provide services to the whole Maldives and their prices are draining the income of the consumers. The customers were using their services only because there were no real alternatives – that is until Airtel came to the scene. MediaNet had tried to ban Airtel in the past by duping the ignorant Sheikhs at Islamic Ministry into believing Airtel is bad because there is a channel called GOD TV promoting Christianity. When this tactic failed, MediaNet has brought Mark Renton, senior vice president of sports channel Ten Sports to convince the authorities to ban Airtel in Maldives. We advise Renton to do a survey in the Maldives first to see what percentage of customers are satisfied with the services MediaNet provides. It will be better for Ten Sports to charge a fee from Airtel for broadcasting the channel to Maldives, once an arrangement is made with Airtel and the Maldivian authorities on  how the Indian satellite service provider can operate in the Maldives. MediaNet is also behind the lawsuit filed by Abbas Adil Riza who is petitioning to ban Airtel on the grounds that GOD TV is among the channels broadcast, claiming that it erodes the Islamic faith of the Maldives. Riza is an executive level staff of MediaNet. With Airtel dishes in almost all homes in the Maldives, it will be foolish for the government of Maldives to ban it and increase the cost of watching the most popular Hindhi soap Kasauti for Maldivian women. The first president of Maldives Mohamed Amin Didi met a very unfortunate fate for banning tobacco at a time of economic recession a few years after the World War II.