Yettel Cuts N1, Nova S for Some Users, Bill Down 300 Dinars

Cable operator Yettel Serbia has, since August 28 and without prior notice, removed the channels N1 and Nova S from some subscribers’ channel lists and cut those subscribers’ monthly bill by 300 dinars. After users complained, the company called the move a pilot project meant to run for 12 months, but it has not said whether the change is connected to the election campaign, nor whether other channels were dropped as well.

The change also hit former SBB subscribers. Yettel took over that company on April 1, 2025, becoming its legal successor, while SBB remained only a brand name on the market, so the same change is now showing up for those subscribers too.

Stjepan Mimica, a Belgrade artist and writer, says that on Sunday he found a lock icon and a message telling him to call the company’s number to subscribe, in place of the N1 program. When he called customer service, he got an explanation he described to reporters.

“They say: ‘We’ve assigned you a different package, without N1 and without a few other channels, but you’ll pay 300 dinars less.’ I told them there’s no way I’d agree to that and that they should have asked me first. Then they said: fine, no problem, give us your ID number. I said no way, you find it, it’s probably in the contract already.”

Mimica, an SBB subscriber for at least a decade, adds that he received no email or phone call before the channels were cut, and that he believes the disconnections are random: users who don’t push back are the ones left without the channels, he says.

Nikola Jovanovic, a human resources consultant, posted on X a letter Yettel sent him before August 28, announcing that he was being enrolled in what the company calls a pilot project. According to him, the letter did not include an exact list of the channels being dropped.

When reporters reached out, Yettel confirmed the move officially for the first time. In a written response carried by Nova.rs, the company said:

“We have not discontinued any channel. We have launched a pilot project aimed at testing whether more flexible TV packages can better meet our users’ needs and expectations.”

According to that response, the pilot involves “a combination of different providers and content categories, including news, children’s and entertainment channels.” The wording does not confirm that N1 and Nova S are the only news channels removed, and Yettel did not answer when asked whether other channels had also been cut. The company says users who do not want to take part in the pilot can keep their original channel list by calling the contact center, but they would then pay the full subscription price. Yettel has not disclosed the criteria used to select users for the pilot, nor how many subscribers are affected in total.

Jovan Ristic of the consumer protection association Efektiva says the way Yettel informed users falls short.

“They have to state what they’re discontinuing, what they’re changing, and what exactly it means that the channel list will be modified. Just saying the list is changing could mean the number of channels is being reduced, and here it isn’t even stated which channels were removed.”

Ristic adds that this amounts to a change of contract terms that is not in the consumer’s favor, and that a change of this kind must be announced in writing at least a month in advance: if it took effect on August 28, notice should have arrived by July 28. In such a case, he says, consumers have the right to cancel their contract.

Ana Stevanovic Djukic, a member of the European Movement in Serbia, is one of the users affected by the cutoff. Alongside a description of the message that greeted her on screen instead of N1, she wrote on X:

“They didn’t think to cut, say, Pink and Informer.”

This is not the first time access to N1 and Nova S has changed since Yettel took over SBB. Three months after the acquisition, in July 2025, both channels returned to the lineup, but only within two new tariff packages. Now, through the pilot project, some users are facing the opposite move: the channels removed without notice, offset by a 300 dinar discount.

The move comes at a time when the council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media still has no chairperson, while elections are already being talked about publicly. Whether Yettel will publish the full list of affected channels and the criteria used to choose users remains an open question the company has yet to answer.