It is Malaysia's most cut-throat monopoly. It is a company which raises prices as it likes, when it likes. It plays suave games with 'packages'; shuffling them around until you're not unequivocally certain what is what anymore. The design is regularly clear though; Astro wants some-more as well as some-more income eliminated to a coffers from your pocket.
And since Astro is a monopoly, there is little a subscriber can do about it. Astro pretends which you regularly have a choice. You can regularly not subscribe to Astro. That is not a choice. It is blackmail. It is arrogance. Choice equates to which you have a preference of heavenly body or cable providers which you can go to. Astro stops you from you do which by maintaining, in collusion with a politicians of a Barisan Nasional, a suffocating monopoly.
Rip off?
And what do you get for your money? Old movies. Low-quality movies. B-grade movies. Endless repeats. When it adds a new channel, you have to puncture in to your slot to compensate for it. For sports, you get a miserable Arena channel during 801. You wish anything else, you compensate for it. If you wish something specific, forget it. Only populist programming is available. It's not about mak! ing a customer happy, it's about making as much income as quick as possible.
And programmes will be censored as it pleases Astro. Movies will be shortened. Sometimes they will be done entirely meaningless. The highly rated Game of Thrones was butchered. For anybody who has already seen it somewhere else, it would have been rendered unwatchable. Tyrion, which brilliant dwarf of a Lannister, migh! t not cu rse. But then, he is not Tyrion, is he, if he does not curse? In fact, he was not even authorised to say 'bastard'. Some half-wittted Astro censor cut his lines. Or it might have been Astro descending over itself trying to greatfully which anachronism from an additional age of a BN Information Minister, Rais Yatim.
In fact, Malaysians do not need Astro during all. All you need is a heavenly body dish, which you do not have to purchase from Astro during all. The supervision makes it illegal to own such meals as well as so you are stranded with Astro. Astro then gouges us for each penny, while a unlucky BN supervision looks away.
Magical licenses
What you are profitable to Astro is a taxation which goes to Ananda Krishnan as well as his rumoured murky backers. Ananda Krishnan has interests in a diversified range of businesses, from Telecoms to Power to Gambling to Satellite Broadcasting. All his interests share a extraordinary usual factor. They need supervision licenses. The Government might authorize licenses, it might reject them or it might pull them behind during any time. Ananda Krishnan appears to have a enchanting hold in Malaysia for getting as well as keeping licenses. How does he do it?
Recently, he has been accused by a Indian CBI of profitable bribes to India's Telecom Minister to gain control; in a most B-grade mean way; of an Indian Telco, Aircel. He is expected to be questioned soon by a CBI. There are already calls for a Telecom Minister he is alleged to have bribed, Dayanidhi Maran, to be arrested.
The actuality which he is being investigated should already be reason for Ananda Krishnan to be investigated in Malaysia. Even some-more so considering his much as well cosy relationships with a statute BN Ministers. Or his attribute with Mahathir, whose son, Mokhzani, sits on a house of Maxis, a company which is alleged to have indulged in corruption in India. Yet no review has been launched by any of Malaysia's most investigative age! ncies op posite him.
Ananda will throw his weight behind BN
Maxis has supposing what can usually be described as disingenuous answers to a CBI's most questions. Suspiciously, The Star, a government-controlled paper has been acting as Ananda's apologist over a past couple of days. Ananda is portrayed by The Star as a poor Malaysian businessman victimized by India's feuding politicians. A ridiculous idea to any who are in a know, as well as a certain sign which Malaysia's BN supervision plans to protect him.
It will be in Ananda's seductiveness to keep a BN in power. All over a world, large businesses keep their elite administrations in power by bankrolling them financially. It is high stakes for Ananda. He needs a BN, he needs their protection.
Most of his customers, though, either subscribing to Astro or Maxis or both, are from a urban areas as well as a 'middle' Malaysia which abhors a BN as well as a undemocratic, ham-handed, tactics. It is indeed ironic which their money, in whatever form, is used to prop up a BN.
If a BN wins an additional election, they will be here for 5 some-more years. Five some-more years which a nation unequivocally cannot afford. And 5 some-more years of profitable unjustifiable, exhorbitant, cut-throat rates to an omnivorous Astro.
Malaysia Chronicle
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