After disrupting the mobile banking industry, Kenya’s Safaricom believes it can equally change the home entertainment sector as well. The Mobile telecom company is betting what it has called “theBIGbox”, a clever Android-powered Free-to-air decoder that doubles as a Mi-Fi as well.
theBIGbox: A Mi-Fi or internet modem
Announced yesterday, the Big Box connects to a 3/4G network through a Safaricom simcard to provide internet services to home users. With this devices, users can share their internet connection with their family members through a hotspot feature similar to how ordinary Mi-Fis or internet routers work.
theBIGbox: A media streaming box
Safaricom’s Android-powered device comes with impressive specifications of 1GB of RAM, 4 GB internal storage, a USB and HDMI port, SD Card slot for media playback for pictures, music and videos plus TV recording capabilities. This means you could connect an external Hard drive and record TV shows or play videos on the big screen.
But since the box is connected to the internet, Safaricom is also touting the device as an online video streaming box. Users will be able to stream popular video sharing sites such as Youtube to their television sets.
theBIGbox: An FTA decoder
The android-powered device boosts over 30 Free-To-Air (FTA) TV channels that include K24, Citizen TV, KTN, NTV, Kingdom TV, Express Live TV, Kiss TV, Hope TV, Family TV, Youth TV , QTV among others. Below is a complete list of FTA channels on Safaricom’s Bigbox;
Data plans, Price and availability
Safaricom is well aware that this box is intended to boost its data revenues. So the network has carefully crafted data plans specifically for the box and they include;
- 6 GB – Ksh 999
- 10 GB – Ksh 1,500
- 20 GB – Ksh 2,000
- 50 GB – Ksh 4,000
The Big box is a three-in-one android-powered device acting as an internet modem, a media streaming box and an FTA TV decoder. The device is currently goes for a price of Ksh 9,999. Safaricom is allowing online orders on its website where you could pay a deposit of Ksh 4,999 and pay the remaining balance in six monthly installments of Ksh 999.
Image: Safaricom
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this is what we need in UG. MTN do you copy?