[Updated] 20+ Gig of Data under 30 Cedis with Airtel Ghana
UPDATE: Wed Aug 10 20:10 —- Airtel Sika Kokoo runs for only limited periods after your first time of subscription. If you happen to not be able to subscribe anymore, perhaps it’s about time you buy a new data SIM
Are you able to keep track of all the promotions your network provider offers? Maybe many promotions are rolled out to cloud the ordinary user’s attention from picking the ones that are easy on the pocket. With a little bit of understanding of how the endless promotions from the network providers are run in your country, you perhaps can leverage some goodness to your web life. This article is a short one to fill you in about a great service from one of Ghana’s giant network providers, Airtel.
Airtel Ghana rolled out a service in addition to the myriads of promotions they’ve got, which allows you to enjoy over 20 Gig of Data per month for just about 30 Ghana Cedis. You might not have heard of it yet. In fact, there are a couple of cheap and almost free internet bundle packages in Ghana (not just from Airtel) but less noise or promotions are made about them.
Airtel has this promotion (or service or offer, I don’t even know how to call such ‘things’ anymore) going on at the moment, which allows users to subscribe for 750 Mb of data (upload/download involved) for just 1 Ghana Cedis ($ 0.26) for until midnight of each day. It’s called “Airtel Sika Kokoo”
“Sika Kokoo” can have multiple meanings depending on how it’s pronounced – 1) ‘Money Cocoa’ 2) ‘Money Gold’ or 3) ‘Money Piles’ (Perhaps the last translation is extreme, but hey, if you leave your users hanging, they get down on whichever branch they want)
How to Subscribe?
To enjoy Airtel Sika Kokoo, follow steps below:
- Make sure you’re unsubscribed to Browse Chaw Service. Do so via *520# and select ‘Unsubscribe’ from the options
- Now, Siki Kokoo part, dial *477# and follow the prompts.
Isn’t that magical? “Only 750MB”, you murmur? Well, that’s not ‘Only’. Look at this way. In a 30-day period, 750 MB multiplied should give us more than 22 Gig of data for just 30 Cedis ( $ 7 )
Troubleshooting
“I can’t Subscribe”: Airtel has placed restrictions on the service (only available in the Northern region, Brong Ahafo, Eastern and the Volta Region of Ghana), thus depending on the region you find yourself in at the point of subscribing, you might be refused. No worries.
When you get the error message, just keep subscribing for about 5 times. One of them will subscribe you. Just keep checking your airtime after every 5 tries.
“I’m subscribed, but no 750 Mb when I check bundle”: Yes. If you don’t have more than 1 cedis credits, the Sika Kookoo won’t complain; you’ll still get the confirmation you’ve subscribed, but it actually won’t subscribe. Make sure you have more than 1 cedis.
And always to verify it worked, dial *125# and ‘Check Bundle Balance‘ first, before jumping into watching YouTube videos.
“Sorry, you’re not eligible”: The reasons might be two fold:
- You’re subscribing with a phone with 3G data enabled. Switch to 2G or use a ‘smart-less’ phone, like Samsung Keystone (I use the keystone to subscribe, then swap the sim into my Vodafone modem)
- You have not subscribed from the Chaw promotion. Do so following steps above
- You have unsubscribed but haven’t given Airtel enough time. If after 6 hours still having same issues, try again the following day
Conclusion
I never used Airtel for data bundling until recently. I believe all the networks in Ghana can do more than what they do at the moment, yet, I look out for some of the goodness in them, and Airtel appears to be shining nicely in the way of providing cheap data bundles.
