Telecoms giant Safaricom has said it does not plan to run a television station even though ithad applied for four broadcasting licences from the Communications Authority.
In a gazette notice dated July 23, the CA disclosed that the giant telco had applied for commercial free-to-air, Internet protocol TV services, subscription management and terrestrial subscription broadcasting services licences.
The CA effectively invited any objections to the grant of the licences to be made within a month, a period which expired last month. The application raised speculations the company was looking to create its own TV content, effectively breathing life into its floundering Big Box Internet-enabled decoder launched on May 8.
Safaricom’s chief executive officer Bob Collymore said: “Our intention is to partner with the local television stations for the production of content.”
He also confirmed that the network has withdrawn the Big Box from the market due to software glitches.
“We have taken the Big Box off sale because there are some software glitches we need to fix. These glitches are largely on the area of WiFi,” he added.
The commercial FTA TV licence allows Safaricom to create own content and air it both terrestrially and via the web platform.
“The Big Box is simply a television decoder that has a WiFi router in it,” he said.
He said over 1, 500 decoders had been sold since the digital broadcasting platform was launched in May.
“We will put the Big Box back on sale at the end of this month. It will come back with a big value data bundle which will be very competitive in the market,” he said.
