Safaricom recently announced the halving the price of access to Blackberry Internet Service in Kenya. From the previous Kshs 1000 to 500 bob. They even made it easier by introducing the daily offer of 20bob unlimited. But this is limited to prepay guys only, postpay can go on paying the usual costs.
Now with access to 1 email account, Blackberry Messenger, instant messaging, browsing via the native browser, blackberry app world access and unlimited social networking via the blackberry native social media clients for a mere 500 bob a month seems tempting. Even for the person who would opt out of Blackberry for the lesser smartphone experience may give this a chance.
Data!
This is a prized posession and if you would tell me you reduce my cost to access email, the internet and social media for half what it used to be will make me think thrice. It isn’t expensive afterall to stay online and respond to emails on the go.
So what’s the difference with the usual 1000bob tariff? The other tariff offers more email accounts at 10 email accounts, wait! Just that. Now in this world of email forwarding you have the option to forward the mails to one account and set it up as the one email account. Sadly you wont be able to reply as a separate email account.
Airtel follows suit
Airtel made it easier by responding with a similar offer
Airtel responds to Safaricom’s halving of BlackBerry monthly subscription by doing exactly the same. And then taking out 1 shilling
as seen on Larry Madowo’s tweet. But I dont know if they also have the 20 bob a day offer too.
Now since the time Safaricom and Airtel offered prepaid blackberry service, BB has ceased being a closed platform where you had bills to pay later, you can now be broke and just pay for a day’s access for 20 bob, and opt out in weekends when its not really necessary. Reducing your smartphone to a feature phone.
IMG Credit: Crackberry.com
i have never gotten this why buy a phone then pay an extra charge to access our e-mail and other apps on the net while with some of the simplest phones still get to do all that without getting inquiring extra charges
Do you realize that there features are also paid for? For example, you will pay to sync email on your smartphone and depending on the data plan that you have, you could pay even triple. Accessing social media and
even simple browsing. Boss! If someone would tell you that you will get access to all these on your usual smartphone you would jump so fast at the prospect. BIS is a good service, what ails BB is the ecosystem.
Actually, for many Blackberry apps you pay extra data costs to access them.