Kwese TV has launched an exclusive Pan-African partnership with Netflix which will see the new broadcasting sensation offer Netflix as part of a fibre optic enabled service called Kwese Play. South Africa will be the first country to offer the service which will eventually be available in every other African country. The service was launched at a media event in Johannesburg Thursday.
Described by Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa on his popular Facebook page as a “game changer”, the new partnership threatens to totally up end entertainment as it is known today. The service uses a platform known as ROKU which broadcasts TV networks as “Streaming Internet Channels”, allowing a broadcaster to stream thousands of channels from anywhere in the world. It also allows customers to select only the channels they want to watch, and pay only for those.
Apart from Netflix there are over 100 Streaming Channels on offer with many of them being free. The basic package costs about $10 per month for Netflix only.
Masiyiwa confirmed on his Facebook page that he had personally sealed the deal with Netflix boss Reed Hastings whom he described as one of the “best entrepreneurs in the world”. The two met in Barcelona Spain to close the deal after months of negotiations by their respective teams.
Kwese TV is a member of the Econet Group of Companies which also includes Africa’s largest fibre optic operator, Liquid Telecom. The company has however stated that Kwese Play will use any fibre optic provider, and will not be exclusive to Liquid.
Kwese TV is now available on multiple platforms including Satellite, mobile and Wi-Fi, and now fibre networks.
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7 comments
Congrats to Econet and Masiyiwa.Econet is indeed a true pan african company
Great News For An African Congratulations
Congrats Strive and congrats econet. On one hand i am also worried about concentration of power in one company and i am thinking econet in 2020 will be in courts here in Zimbabwe over its monopoly and the government will be saying break up the pieces. Strive is a great guy and may mean no harm doing these marvellous deals but who knows how others that might come after him might do with that concentration of power in a few hands. Obviously the catch for now is we all love TV and kwese is magic. But that is exactly what could find us in a mess one day. Mexico today is Carlos Slim and Carlos Slim is Mexico. That is not something we want in the end. Lets be wary of that.
Thats great news question is will we be able to pay via Ecocash and will the Netflix and Kwese app be zero rated on Liquid and Econet, so far Netflix works in Zimbabwe as long as you have a VCN but last time I tested the Kwese app in Zimbabwe some of the content wasnt accessible
huuu quite interesting
You could be right Wengai on the concentration of power in one person but there’s no mention anywhere of Strive going to all those companies and blocking others. He just sees opportunities and go for them well before anyone else and then the competition sets the government upon him. We heard of Net*One being given exclusive bandwidth on Transmedia’s UHF frequency and the then CEO-cum-politician when to town on it only to disappear before even casting even a YouTube video. Enter Econet with soccer on Dead BC and the same people blocked the partnership even though soccer has a huge following. The reason for the cancellation of this arrangement: Econet is a competitor to ZBC so they must use their own platform, blah, blah. The thinking was that Econet was going to build brick-and-mortar studios then recruit staff, etc. Unbeknown to them, Strive had an ace up his sleeve: making use of existing services and mixing that with modern technology. And boom! The competition has now been brought onto their doorstep and they are now abusing the courts to stifle innovation.
Wengai,if it was a foreign company you wouldn,t brought it up.