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Johannesburg - South Africa’s biggest mobile network Vodacom has entered the race to deliver video content over the internet in South Africa.
Vodacom announced on Tuesday that it has launched ‘Video Play’, a BlackBerry and Android application that taps spare network capacity to download and cache selected videos at reduced cost.
According to the Vodacom website, selected videos are downloaded to devices overnight between 12h00 and 05h00.
Vodacom also said that Video Play bills in minutes and not megabytes.
“When installed on a mobile device the app offers access to a selection of mobile videos from content producers like eNCA, eTV, Urban Brew and MobiTV,” said Vodacom.
“The initial content consists of music videos, with a focus on gospel, local and African music. The selection will be expanded to include a variety of other content over time,” the company added.
The move by Vodacom to launch Video Play comes amid reports that the company has also been in discussion with Naspers over an internet video partnership.
Last week, Naspers also launched its competitor to Netflix, ShowMax, which is a video on-demand that offers top TV series and movies.
Netflix, meanwhile, has previously said that it intends to enter markets such as South Africa by the end of 2016.
Times Media Group also launched its video on demand play Vidi last year while MTN has a similar offering dubbed FrontRow.
