All Tigo customers in Tanzania will now be able to access free WhatsApp service. This announcement was made by Tigo General Manager, Diego Gutierrez making the company the first telecom company in Tanzania to offer the Facebook owned social media services for free.
The announcement will see all Tigo customers subscribing to the company’s weekly and monthly internet be entitled to free WhatsApp service.
With an excess of 1 billion users globally, WhatsApp is the most popular mobile messaging application that enables users to exchange media, texts, video clips and voice calls. According to Facebook’s recent our quarterly results, Almost 1 billion people use WhatsApp. The service is currently the most popular mobile messaging application that enables users to exchange media, texts, video clips and voice calls.
“From now onwards, all Tigo customers buying any of our weekly or monthly packages will be eligible to enjoy FREE WhatsApp. This of course, is for customers with data enabled devices. We want to encourage our non-smartphone user customers to acquire highly discounted smartphones sold in Tigo shops to be able to enjoy this new offer,” Gutierrez said.
This is not the first time Tigo is offering social media services to its customers for free. In 2014, the company also partnered with Facebook to give its customers free Facebook access in Kiswahili, the country’s national language also widely spoken in east, central and southern African countries.
Tigo also was the first telecom company to launch a mobile money App for Adroid and iOs users and the first in East Africa to introduce cross-border money transfer with currency conversion.
The free Tigo WhatsApp joins a long list of other ‘firsts’ that the company has pioneered in its digital innovations including the recent launch of 4G LTE networks that gives Tigo customers high speed internet connection which is five times higher than the technology available in the Tanzanian market.
The free WhatsApp service will however be available only on iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Nokia Symbian60-phones.
