Cloning of Sky?s IRD activation cards has reached such serious proportions that it?s thought be one of the reasons for the unprecedented attrition of the subscriber base reported in the second quarter. Worse still, it has cost the DTH operator some 10 million US Dollars. Sky has been obliged to swap out every single outstanding card to catch the clones and combat unauthorized use of its service. Other findings likely to draw attention include a market survey commissioned by another major operator that has detected some 5 million people in Brazil who say they are subscribers. The known number of paying subscribers is 3.5m, so presumably about 35% of those self-declared subscribers are "free riders".
DBS
