Canal+ Maghreb has stopped broadcasting on the Arabsat satellite claiming piracy as the reason.
About a year ago, Canal+ CEO Bertrand Meheut said the Canal+ Maghreb service would cease operations because of widespread piracy in the target markets Algeria and Morocco.
Canal+ made the decision to stop marketing its prepaid cards in the two countries, but would honour all cards out in the market. On January 31 the validity of all these card expired, so Canal+ could switch off all broadcasts from Arabsat.
Canal+ Maghreb began broadcasting in February 2009. The offer consisted of 25 channels using Viaccess encryption.
“We decided to postpone our commercial investments as long as the control of piracy will not bear fruit”, said Meheut, when presenting the annual results of Vivendi in Paris on March 1, 2011.
