In the late part of last week, both Orange and Safaricom in Kenya posted full page ads in the national newspapers promoting their own versions of DSTVmobile offers. Both ads are clearly targeting the impending South Africa’s Football World Cup that starts in June 2010 to boost sales. Previously, only Safaricom had DSTVmobile on its network which has been available in both Mombasa and Nairobi. Therefore, Orange is the second mobile network in Kenya to partner with DSTVmobile.

What is interesting between the Safaricom and Orange DSTVmobile offers is that Safaricom has opted for lower cost handsets in the form of the ZTE f900 at Kes. 9,000.00 and the ZTE f912 at Kes. 7,999.00. However, Orange which has an offer using the probably better but more expensive Nokia 5330 at Kes. 14,999.00. In both the Safaricom and Orange offers DSTVmobile will be free with no subscription charges until the 31st March 2011 meaning there is a decent incentive to actually sign-up.

Currently, DSTVmobile has 13 live channels on offer in Kenya. At the same time, the Safaricom offer comes with a “sweetener” of a free football and vuvuzela (I’ve always wanted one of those!) provided you buy their handsets from one of their official retail centres. At the same time, the Orange DSTVmobile comes with an extra incentive in the form of a Bunda 500 bundle which includes 30 minutes voice calls to any network, 300 SMSs and 30MB of data usage.