Last week, a local company called StarSat told us that they were representing StarTimes in Zimbabwe and that they had secured a license to broadcast via satellite in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, we made the wrong assumption that their claims were genuine as we didn’t believe they’d have any reason to lie. And sadly, we ran with the story.
The real StarTimes visited us this week and we discussed at length and they made it clear that they do not know who StarSat is and that they have a big problem with the fact that the company has infringed on their trademark. The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe also made it clear that they had not licensed StarSat to provide satellite pay-TV.
Eventually, ourselves and StarTimes agreed that they publish their own statement for the benefit of our readers. Here’s the statement below:
Statement on Infringement of StarTimes Trademark
Recently a private company illegally used trademark of StarTimes and posted a fake message that StarTimes secured a license for Direct-To-Home (DTH) satellite TV in Zimbabwe on Facebook and other social networks. The fake message was widely quoted by media and confused the public.
StarTimes Group is extremely astonished by the infringement of StarTimes’ trademark and our DTH business trademark StarSat. The infringement act greatly affected the reputation of StarTimes brand.
We strongly condemn the infringement act and reserve the right to sue responsible parties. We would like to thank Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) for having helped to dismiss the fake news. We are willing to work together with Zimbabwean government, BAZ and the public to resist and correct such behavior, maintaining and safeguarding the impartiality and order of market.
StarTimes is the leading digital-TV operator in Africa, serving nearly 10 million subscribers and covering 90% of the continent’s population. StarTimes owns a featured content platform, with 440 authorized channels consisting of news, movies, series, sports, entertainment, children’s programs, fashion, religion etc.
StarTimes has established companies in 30 countries including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, DRC, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Republic of Central African, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana etc.
The company’s vision is “To ensure that every African family can access, afford, watch and share the beauty of digital TV.” StarTimes enables more and more African households to have access to the digital TV network by using the all-round coverage of DTT and DTH as well as the future mobile internet technology means.
3 comments
Dear Techzim journos how do you distinguish between news and fake news?
it’s a long answer.
The short version is that, the method works 99% of the time.
The other 1% it only succeeds in alerting a company like StarTimes of people infringing on their IP as well as people like BAZ of organisations breaking the law.
When the 1% happens we make it a point to let our readers know we got it wrong.
Call Trump and ask him to comment