By Staff Writer
Econet, the owners of Liquid Telecom, has introduced its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service Kwesé Play in South Africa.
The firm through Econet Media is bringing Kwesé Play video streaming service to the country.
The company will leverage Africa’s largest fibre network, available through sister company Liquid Telecom which concluded its acquisition of Neotel last year. Neotel holds leading-edge 4G and 5G LTE spectrum capability which is being configured to carry video content.
Rather than building its own VOD business, Econet Media has taken a different approach and invested in building the best platform to house some of the biggest names in VOD globally.
Kwesé is the exclusive African partner for Roku and will provide an own-branded Roku box to South African customers.
It also launched a Roku box bundled with Netflix.
The custom-built Roku is priced at R1,599.
It is already available from Liquid Telecom, Cellucity, FNB, Incredible Connection and Vox.
Kwesé Play is targeted mainly at fibre-to-the-home broadband users.
Each Kwesé Play Roku also includes a 3-month subscription to Netflix’s standard plan.
The company has streaming deals with RedBull TV, TED, YouTube, etc and provides more than 100 Video on Demand services.
Kwesé also announced the launch of a long-term partnership with Netflix for Sub-Saharan Africa, leveraging Kwesé’s pan-African reach to help make it easier for African consumers to enjoy Netflix.
“Our strategy is to provide the best in VOD via a superior network. We’ve partnered with the best in IPTV hardware and content to offer our viewers world-class programming through our fibre network infrastructure,” said Joseph Hundah, Econet Media’s president and CEO.
