How To Get Kwese TV To Your Home (In Zimbabwe)
by Archie Moyo
Social Media became a buzz this weekend when it was announced that Econet Wireless had won the court case against the Broadcasting Association of Zimbabwe (BAZ) regarding the licence to provide Kwese TV in Zimbabwe. Kwese had initially been licenced through Mr Dish who had a broadcasting licence until BAZ decided to challenge the use of that licence for Kwese and shut it down just a day after launch. I’m sure most of us want to know how to get Kwese Tv into our homes here in Zimbabwe. After all, this is the potential DSTV slayer!
How to Get it
Shop and for $49 you get the gear (Decoder + Dish) as well as the installation and your first-month subscription Free. Installation is done by registered Kwese installers who are called Technites. The joy of it is that the entire installation process is communicated to you via Text. You are informed when a Technite has been assigned to you; then when the Technite is on his way to your house (with a link to follow your Technite in real time); and you are updated once the installation is complete. This end – to – end communication of the process really gives a feel of reliability for the service.
How much are Monthly Subscriptions?
So it’s all very nice, rainbows and unicorns that we get the first month of Kwese free but how much will it cost afterwards. We obviously aren’t trying to sell our souls to the devil over one month’s free viewing.
It has so far been communicated that Kwese will have a single bouquet with a good number of channels to view as shown in the picture below. This single bouquet can be subscribed on three available periods: Monthly, 7 days and 3 days. This sounds like budgeting heaven as you can actually pay for when you want to view. This should take away the heartache that comes with knowing that you paid for a full bouquet you only watch several times a month. The costs will be:
Monthly – $29
7 Day – $9
3 Day – $5
With prices like that, this is likely to put a dent in the revenue DSTV has been getting from the Zimbabwe market (especially since they charged us more than all our other neighbours). This is paired with the fact that DSTV has been keen on getting paid only in US dollars and because of that, it has become increasingly difficult to make DSTV payments.
Available Channels
I will not lie, this is a a tempting lineup of channels to watch. The proof shall be in the pudding as to how good these channels will be and the content on them.
What Would Be Nice To Have?
- EPL Games. Some time in 2016 a press release came through stating that Kwese had won Free-To-Air(FTA) rights for the English Premier League for three seasons. We are yet to confirm the position with the EPL games right now but it would be nice to have them. This will also shatter DSTVs footing in the Zimbabwe market.
- Custom Bouquet/ TV-On-Demand. Econet has been synonymous with innovation for a long time and we will be expecting the same again with Kwese Tv. It would be amazing if we can actually pick and choose the channels that we want to have on our bouquet. This can reduce the cost of the service to people and actually reduce cases of people paying for channels that they will never watch. This could be especially easy because of various integrations that Kwese can have with other Econet Products like Ecocash.
Is It Worth It? Brilliance
It may be too early to tell but there are a lot of factors that look to push things in favour of Kwese in Zimbabwe. Difficulty in making payments and the potential to have local content on Kwese will be a crowd puller. In the end we have nothing but time to see how they perform. Even if it starts of difficult hopefully they shall continuously improve.
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