CAPE TOWN - South African football fans will no longer have to worry about about using a lot of data when viewing sports content.
A new mobile app, Goal Zero lauched by Goal.com, a football news website allows users to have data free access to content when users install the Goal Zero app on their smartphones.
You can view content such as; Follow games live with real time scores, match events. live commentary, lineups, competition tables etc.
The Goal Zero app was developed on the biNu App Publishing Platform and distributed by Perform Group. Using the biNu App Publishing Platform, organisations can build ‘data lite’ versions of their current app or mobile content offerings. So the company incorporates technology that focuses on data efficiency.
Peter Burroughs, MD Africa at Perform Group says that as a result of the significantly reduced data usage, the Group has been able to zero-rate the server and completely absorb the data costs on behalf of Goal Zero users.
“We needed to find an additional approach within this emerging market to support our existing strategy that sees GOAL already reach 1.8 million soccer fans in South Africa and more than 22 million soccer fans across the African continent each month.
"For a large number of South Africans, data affordability remains a complex issue, so being able to remove the data-cost barrier to make our product #datafree and more accessible was a no-brainer,” says Burroughs.
So far, Goal Zero has recieved 20 000 installs and 1.3 million page views.
On average, only 0.5MB of data has been required per user per day. As of 19 November, the total data used was 1.56 GB which at a cost of only twenty cents per MB equated to R319, to be borne by Perform Group.
Gour Lentell, CEO of biNu, points out that, “Apps developed for higher-end devices in developed countries, are not designed to succeed in emerging markets like South Africa.”
Lentell explains that Goal Zero has been developed with data efficiency as the priority. Goal Zero does not contain banner advertising which can account for up to 50% of data usage – for which users would generally have to bear the cost.
“Goal Zero has been designed to include zero-rated, full screen, 10 second vertical video ads which will still be delivered at no cost to the user,” says Lentell. Goal Zero #datafree can be downloaded via the Google Play Store or from https://datafree.co.za.
Keeping up to date with your favourite soccer team for mahala? Yes please! Download Goal Zero for free, and browse for free. No data, no problem. Visit https://t.co/v8YCENxKlh to see for yourself. pic.twitter.com/QoC0tBBfsj
— #datafree (@datafreeSA) November 9, 2017
Mobile data needs to get this much cheaper before most of the world can afford it - biNu reduces data cost by 98% https://t.co/tpnpJ6L4CI
— #datafree (@datafreeSA) June 20, 2016
Latest soccer news, live scores, commentaries, results, tables and schedules. #DataFree in South Africa @binumobile https://t.co/CGL0LNrXvh
— Jeremy George (@Jeromeister) September 11, 2017