The event had just started when I arrived at the 6th floor of Oksart Place on Ring Road Central in Accra, Ghana. I was quickly ushered into the spacious orange-themed conference room. Partners were present from several African countries.

Esoko partners listening attentively in the conference room known as Damba Meeting Room

The Introduction

Members of Esoko’s tech teams (geeks, programmers, managers) introduced themselves in a rather humorous manner that sent waves of laughter across the room. They kept unleashing their funny nicknames that one would have imagined would be confined to the ears of the esoteric Esokoninis.

Esoko tech team with Sudan Partner

The Esokoninis

Esokoninis are not citizens of a former Soviet republic. That’s the informal demonym for Esoko staff. They came across as boisterous, intelligent and creative minds turning the wheels of Esoko. I chatted with a few of them and the information gathered contributed to the subsequent write-ups about Esoko.

The Graphs

Next were slideshows that shared the decision-making processes that go into designing an Esoko application. Some details about this would be shared in subsequent posts.

The Drama

Esoko went to the extent of dramatising some of their processes with a rendition titled “A Day In The Life Of Our CEO”. The largely fictional drama explained some of the iteration of Esoko.

Another drama was when Mlen-Too Wesley, Esoko Lead Developer, took the stage to announce a new Esoko feature. His presentation style Apple’s Steve Jobs written all over it. His engaging presentation focused on iFrame, “a powerful content embedding technology developed exclusively by Esoko”. Launching in 2012, iFrame would allow content with content and enable partners to display Esoko content on their respective websites. I was almost hooked until Mlen-Too Wesley rescued me in a chat later, explaining that the entire presentation was a practical joke based on a real event with an Esoko client.

Esoko tech team with Madagascar Partner

The Esoko Hub

Esoko is housed in a multi-storey building at the beginning of Ring Road Central in Accra, with the 3rd to 6th floors reserved for its exclusive use. The building, known as Oksart Place, is a stone’s throw from the iconic BusyInternet, where Esoko was nurtured.You cannot miss the orange colour of Esoko’s logo in the office spaces, conference rooms, lighting and interior decoration. Somehow, it was heart-warming that a dot-com was this established and expansive in Ghana.

Esoko is a mobile integrated platform used by projects, businesses & individuals to exchange market info via SMS. Built, building and operating out of Accra.

Thanks for taking time to consume this appetizer. The main course would be served very soon and would include some exciting technical and business details about Esoko.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Web East Africa 2010 for Nairobi Kenya
2. Why I prefer Zain to MTN
3. Interview: Ad-Connect spearheading mobile learning in West Africa

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic multimedia device

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was announced back in October 2008 with the earliest phones hitting the market the following month. The multimedia device was cutting at that time and was widely considered as Nokia’s answer to the iPhone. Indeed, it was one of Nokia’s earliest touchscreen mobile phones and one of its most successful. As of November 2009, 8 million units had been sold.

Nokia has systematically kept the phone close to the hearts and minds of its fans by releasing periodic firmware updates that have fixed known bugs and added some functionality which have improved overall user experience.

Firmware Updates

From firmware version 20.0.012 onwards, the 5800′s CPU clock was increased from 369 MHz to 434 MHz matching the N97 specification[3]. However, improved overall performance can be observed since firmware version 30. On January 13, 2010, Nokia released a major firmware update, version 40.0.005. The update includes bug fixes, speed improvements and new features. The most visible are kinetic scrolling to all menus (except the main and applications menus) and an improved home screen that was first introduced on the Nokia 5530. This version update also saw the removal of alphanumeric keypad in portrait view during text input. This was replaced by a full QWERTY keyboard. The new home screen provides a contacts carousel, with up to 20 contacts and program shortcuts on screen at the same time.

On April 19, 2010, firmware version 50.0.005 was released. This new major update brought some new features available in Nokia N97, such as an upgrade to the existing web browser to version 7.2 and full kinetic scrolling and auto-full screen while browsing the web; a new music player with mini-album art in the song list and the album list, initial letter filtering of track titles in the music player while scrolling using the scroll-bar. As a result, the search function was removed from the music player. A new application called Ovi Sync was installed and the Nokia Music Store received a revamped user interface and was renamed to “Ovi Music.” In some regions, Quick Office 4.2.374 is integrated with full free license. Search application’s icon was changed and a few more minor updates for better touch sensitivity and tweaks for faster operation of the phone are present.

Firmware 51.0.006 appeared in August 2010 and contained minor bug fixes and updates to various applications.

A powerful application has since been made available to a selected number of Nokia smartphones, including the 5800. Nokia’s Ovi Maps has since gone off its premium business model and is now subscription-free. Ovi Maps makes the 5800 even more attractive to end-users.

Of course, Ovi Store opens up the device to a world of apps. A wide variety of entertainment apps exist in Nokia’s marketplace that take advantage of the 5800′s multimedia credentials to offer even more value and functionality.

One cannot help wondering how long the 5800 would stay relevant considering the imminent entry of Nokia N8.

Related posts:

1. Nokia releases Nokia N97 software update 2.0 & Nokia N97 mini
2. Nokia announces Nokia N9, an all-screen smartphone
3. Nokia N97 mobile computer to begin selling worldwide in June

SMS, the happy accident of mobile technology that turns 17 this year, shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, maintains Pieter Streicher, managing director of BulkSMS.com, if anything SMS is going to accelerate its stellar trajectory thanks to increased business adoption.

Texting on a keyboard phone

Figures released recently by mobile maven Tomi Ahonen show that SMS is the most widely used data application on the planet, with 53% of the total world’s population and 78% of the world’s mobile phone users texting. Even in the USA, which was famously late to the SMS game, more than two-thirds of Americans send text messages. If you look at the number of users, SMS eclipses email by 2.6 times, despite email having been around for 39 years.

And all over the world, people increasingly prefer to send SMS messages than to make voice calls. Back in 2007, JD Powers reported the first ever decrease in number of voice calls had taken place in the UK while the number of text messages continued to grow. In 2009 Lightspeed Research reported that 11% of mobile phone users surveyed in the UK don’t initiate voice calls at all, but do send texts. In the US this number is 13%.

There is a range of reasons for this shift, and Streicher argues that one of them is that in this day and age of information overload, SMS is simply better suited to the way we want to communicate, and be communicated with.

Unlike with landlines in previous generations, we aren’t as compelled to answer a mobile phone and are happy to let a call go to voicemail, especially with call volumes increasing. But voicemail is problematic – we don’t always pick them up immediately, it’s not always convenient to take down phone numbers, and sometimes details get garbled. Indeed, the younger generation often switch off voicemail all together.

Compare this to SMS. It’s a simple matter to quickly skim text messages and it can be done very discreetly. All the details are there and can be used immediately or saved for future reference. A 160 Characters study showed that we respond to text messages in five minutes, while we take up to 24 hours to reply to email.

So it seems to make sense that if you are arranging a meet-up with a friend, you’ll text her, the message will get to her even if she is otherwise occupied, she’ll reply as soon as she is able to, and the message will get back to you whether or not you are available at the same time. SMS makes this type of asynchronous communication incredibly interactive and effective, even though it is not strictly taking place in real time.

Increasingly we are seeing this type of asynchronous communication being adopted by businesses. And it’s not only for marketing messages but for day-to-day business communications to customers. This is demonstrated by BulkSMS’s own traffic reports, which show an increase in single SMS messages from companies rather than bulk send-outs. If you need to reach a client, you could make multiple phone calls until you get hold of them, or you could send a single SMS, to be read as soon as the customer is able to.

More and more people are refusing to answer calls that come up as a “private number” because they have been the victims of too many unsolicited marketing calls. But if your company uses a least cost router that doesn’t display an outgoing number, your legitimate calls may also be ignored. Provided an SMS is sent with clear details in the message identifying the sender, and provided your company has a track record of using messaging responsibly, your message is unlikely to be ignored.

In addition, the stats quoted in this article show very clearly that Jane and Joe Soap prefer to communicate via SMS. So it’s madness to try to force them to communicate with your company in a different way to their choosing, especially if it’s a customer services issue.

And SMS isn’t just playing a role in customer-facing communication. The Mobile Data Association, quoted by Ahonen, reports that UK executives receive as many as 40 work-related text messages daily, and consider SMS to be their most valuable time management tool.

Business communication is going to lag consumer behaviour. But modern managers and businesses see the value and necessity of this type of communication – and this will further drive the already rapid growth of SMS.

Related posts:

1. A review of MTN Nigeria Mobile Broadband service
2. Cell C wins global telecoms award
3. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service

Free SMS to Ghana ads on Facebook

If you are a regular Facebook user in Ghana, you would have noticed recent free sms ads like the ones shared to the left of this article. One of the companies advertising free sms to Ghana is SMSGH. SMSGH owns a platform for free sms at lite.mytxtbox.com

Alex Adjei Bram is the General Manager (Sales/Marketing) of SMSGH.COM
I chatted with him recently to ask about their new free sms services and to know the catch behind it as well as how they intend to make considering several free sms websites have failed in the past.

Oluniyi: I’d wanted a few questions about your free sms service.

Alex: Ok

Oluniyi: What’s the business model? Do you want to harvest people’s mobile numbers and then blast ads to them?

Alex: No

Oluniyi: As you know, nothing is really really ever free and considering you are spending money to even advertise the service.

Alex: Ha Ha Ha Ha. The messages are paid for by advertisers.

Oluniyi: Oh okay. Ad driven.

Alex: Yeah

Oluniyi: …but several of such websites have failed in the past. What makes you think you would succeed? What makes yours different?

Alex: Advertisers who use http://pro.mytxtbox.com can place SMS ads with specific keywords.

Oluniyi: Ah. Yours is sort of targetted. Since you mentioned keywords, that implies that the messages flowing through your systems are scanned for words. What about privacy issues?

Alex: Privacy for users or privacy for advertisers?

Oluniyi: For users.

Alex: It’s the standard website privacy policy we’re running on but users’ details are not disclosed to advertisers.

Oluniyi: I see.

Alex: Have you tried it yet?

Oluniyi: Trust me. It tested it the first day I came across it. How has the reception been?

Alex: Somewhat overwhelming.

Oluniyi: Really? That’s impressive.

Alex: We’re currently doing 4 messages every minute. We hope that once a recipient mass is built advertisers can ride on that to market their products.

Oluniyi: At the rate of patronage you described as “somewhat overwhelming”, how do you see your free sms service in 3 months’ time?

Alex: At this rate we may hit 3 msg/ sec in 3 months time. Could even be way more.

Oluniyi: Impressive.

Alex: I would love for you to try it out. Register an account at pro.mytxtbox.com We’ll top you up with some credits and then you can give us some feedback.

Oluniyi: Google has recently turned attention to your market audience. How do you find the competition from Google?

Alex: It’s going to be exciting. Google being an international brand and all. We hope they will bring some good competition to the industry.

Oluniyi: Why exciting, considering Google is a MEGA competitor?

Alex: We’re very excited.

Oluniyi: You have not stated the cause of your excitement. …in relation to Google.

Alex: Google will bring some good attention to the industry. We think we are good too… They have some pretty good products.

Oluniyi: Good enough not to be worried about competition from Google. I see.

Alex: No. We are not at all worried.

Oluniyi: So how effective and relevant is SMS advertising from your years of experience in Ghana?

Alex: It’s very effective.

Oluniyi: Does your service offer any means of measuring effectiveness?

Alex: And yes quite relevant too. Most of the time via reply short codes. We usually record an average of over 6% response which is far better than radio, TV and print put together. But SMS needs to be used right when applied wrongly responses are even in the negative. That’s the challenge of the industry.

Oluniyi: In that case, what help do you offer to your clients on how to use SMS marketing effectively?

Alex: Apart from our free marketing guides and other literature we deploy apps that help users utilize SMS effectively.

No related posts.

The message read:

New! Free SMS in Gmail
Send free SMS directly from Gmail – just enter a phone number and click Enter. SMS replies come right to your Gmail inbox.
This service is now available for mobile phones in Ghana.

The free SMS can be sent directly from within Gmail once the user logs in, as seen from the screenshot below:

Free SMS in Gmail. Snapshot from Gmail.com

According to Google:

Sending a message is free from Gmail to any phone. When replying with an SMS from phone to Gmail, you will be charged a regular SMS rate by your mobile provider. Gmail SMS is currently available in Ghana with MTN, Zain, Tigo and Kasapa.

However, efforts to try out the new service on MTN, Zain and Vodafone have so far failed as can be seen from the screenshot below. The numbers were whitened due to privacy concerns but the network codes can be clearly identified:

Gmail free SMS to Ghana failing so far.

Gmail is a free, advertising-supported webmail, POP3, and IMAP service provided by Google.

UPDATE: Google has since fixed the bug.

Related posts:

1. My expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana
2. Ghana: Mobile Internet as a credible backup
3. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service

The entire kit cost N18,650:

• HSDPA USB stick: N8,500
• MTN SIM: N150
• Airtime: N10,000 (24/7 monthly plan)

The MTN agent asked for an ID and passport photo. As I had no prior knowledge they would demand this, I was only fortunate that I always carried a driving licence and spare passport photos in my wallet everywhere I go, for times like this. Be informed. Also, I was made to sign a fine print containing their terms of service.

The device

MTN Nigeria 3G pack

Branded as MTN F@stlink E156G, the USB stick is essentially a Huawei E156G with the following specifications:

• HSDPA/UMTS 2100MHz – it can connect to just about any 3.5G cellular network in the world if it were unlocked.
• EDGE/GPRS/GSM 1900/1800/900/850 MHz – it can connect to just about any GSM cellular network in the world if it were unlocked.
• HSDPA service data rate up to 3.6Mbps – real life speeds would vary
• SMS service – users can send and receive text messages when using the bundled software
• Micro SD card slot – it can take a Micro SD of up to 4GB capacity and thus double as a USB drive
• Plug and play – there is no need to install software from a CD. The software bundled on the device would have to be installed though, for PCs and Macs.

Before you decide to buy, the device has the following system requirements:

• Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista. I am safely assuming it would work well on Windows 7. Also, I got it to work on Ubuntu 9.10
• Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 with latest upgrades
• Hardware system should meet the recommended requirements for the installed OS version
• Display resolution: 800 x 600 and above
• Standard USB interface

The software
Branded MTN F@stlink, it offers 7 tabs, namely:

• Connection: this is where the user initiates a connection or disconnection to/from the MTN network
• Statistics: offers a detailed break-down of data usage and includes a graph
• Message: enables the user to send/receive text messages and manage existing messages
• Phonebook: an address book that saves contact details.. Record include Name, Mobile Number, Office Number, Home Number, Email address and Remarks.
• Airtime: enables the user to check and load airtime. It is divided into postpaid and prepaid, to cater for both market segments.
• Internet: a click on this loads the default web browser
• Bundle plan: enables the user to select which of the bundle plans to subscribe to, and check the status of an existing bundle. This service is for prepaid subscribers only. The confirmation is via a text message.

The bundles
MTN Nigeria offers 3 data bundles:

• 24/7 Monthly Plan: this is the ultimate plan from MTN and comes with a 3GB data cap but is available 24 hours every day within a 30 days period. It goes for N10,000 per month. This bundle is ideal for heavy users.
• Nite Plan: this is usable only from 10pm to 5am and also comes with a 3GB data limit but costs only N2,500 monthly. This bundle is ideal for surfers who have a day job and can afford to stay awake all night.
• 24 hours Daily: this is clearly targetted at the occasional web surfer and comes with a meagre 50MB data cap. It costs only N500.

The service
I subjected the mobile broadband service to a speed test at the time of writing using speedtest.net; the following screenshot shows the highest speed I got. Note that speedtest.com used Vodafone Ghana’s server for the test.

The results shown in the screenshot above just about represent an average of the several tests I carried out. It shows that MTN Nigeria offers a download speed of about 0.43 Mb/s and a miserable upload speed of 0.06Mb/s as well as a high latency of 366ms.

This means, upload heavy data using the mobile broadband service would be a slow experience and making phone/video calls via the Internet would be less than ideal due to the high latency as seen from the ping test.

The coverage
It is critical to confirm 3G coverage in your locality before opting for MTN’s mobile broadband service for therein lies the key to the advertised speeds. From the marketing flyer attached to the kit:

3G service is currently available in most part of Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano, Benin, Ibadan, Kaduna, Onitsha, Aba, Asaba.

MTN also offers an extensive EDGE coverage that is even more nationwide. EDGE which offers a fairly fast connectivity is available where there is no 3G coverage.

The bad
The MTN mobile broadband service was not without hiccups, at the time of extensive use.

• Intermittent disconnections: The service simply went off occasionally and connection could be re-established by disconnecting and re-connecting from the network. At other times, the downtime lasted over an hour.
• SSL traffic: Occasionally, it was impossible to access secured websites. All access to URLs starting with https:// were in possible and thus secured chatting programs like Yahoo Messenger and Skype failed to connect too. This error typically occurred at mid-mornings.
• Not all websites were accessible: Even when the mobile broadband service was at its peak of performance, some websites were not accessible despite repeated attempts. The persistent error message was: “No suitable nodes are available to serve your request.” A work-around this was to use a proxy server.
• The offered data bundles are not very flexible as users’ choices are limited. Heavy users are forced to subscribed to the 24/7 monthly plan for N10,000 even if they would need less than 3GB monthly.
• It is difficult to know the status of usage after crossing the 1GB milestone. Checking your data usage via SMS thereafter does not offer an exact figure of used data but simply states that 2GB has been used. It is thus difficult for the user to know when usage is getting close to the 3GB limit.

The verdict
MTN Nigeria’s mobile broadband service offers high-speed internet connectivity much of the time and is worth buying where mobile connectivity is needed or fixed broadband options are not available provided the user can live with the few annoyances highlighted above.

Note: it is possible to enjoy the broadband service from MTN without buying their F@stlink modem. One could either browse on the (smart)phone itself or use it as a modem. When using the phone as a modem, the user would need the following:

• a 3.5G-capable mobile phone
• modem driver & dialling software: these are typically provided on a CD bundled with the phone, by the phone manufacturer, or can be downloaded via the Internet
• a means of connectivity the phone to a computer: whilst bluetooth is usable, USB is ideal. Infrared is archaic.
• an MTN data bundle subscription

Backstory*:

• I have used the MTN Mobile Broadband service extensively before buying their F@stlink modem, using Nokia smartphones as modem and have experienced the high speed in Lagos, Ibadan and Kaduna. EDGE worked in Zaria.
• MTN branded complimentary gift items accompanied the broadband kit: a pen and a writing pad.
• I did not have enough time to read the terms before signing and so not sure about what it contains.

*The info in the “backstory” section, are what I considered too trivial to add into the main body of the review but useful enough to share with you.

Did you find this review useful, feel free to share this blog with others. Do you have an additions or questions about this review, add these using the comments area.

No related posts.

MTN 3G pack. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao.

I recently picked up an MTN “Exclusive 3G Pack” for 100 Ghana Cedis (about $69) and have used it extensively for about 14 days mainly in Accra. The information below is based on some of my experience using the mobile broadband service.

The 3G pack contained:

• an MTN-branded Huawei E160E USB stick
• an MTN Internet SIM

Technical Specification

Find the technical specifications and some explanation of the USB device, below:

• Network: HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz) & GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz). This means the device can work across most GSM networks, globally.
• Speed: It supports 3.6Mbps HSDPA services. Since MTN offers connectivity over a 3.5G network, users can experience theoretical speeds of up to 3.6Mbps which is very high by today’s best standards.
• Memory: Micro SD Card Slot. It supports up to 4GB storage when a MicroSD card is placed in the included slot and therefore the device can double as a USB storage device.
• Communication: SMS services – users can send and receive text messages through the software bundled with the device. Though the device can support PC voice, the function is not enabled by MTN.
• Support data statistics: The bundled software offers extensive graphical statistics.
• Plug & Play: it works almost as soon as it is connected to a PC or Mac. It requires no seperate CD installation software.
• Cross-platform: Support Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac Operating Systems. From my tests, I also got it to work on an Ubuntu desktop version operating system.

MTN F@stlink software

A screenshot of MTN F@stlink software.

Installing the device was a fast and straight-forward process. The easy-to-use MTN F@stlink (the dialling software) was soon installed.

MTN F@stlink comes with the following features:

• Connection: allows users to connect and disconnect to the Internet
• Statistics: displays real-time statistics whilst the user is connected to the Internet and also includes a daily, monthly and yearly data counter.
• Text: enables the user to send and receive text messages as well as manage existing text messages.
• Phonebook: a simple contact management system that includes the following fields – Name, Mobile Number, Office Number, Home Number, E-mail Address.
• Airtime: enables the user to check existing data balance and as well as load a regular MTN airtime voucher.

MTN Internet SIM

The special SIM card bundled with the MTN “Exclusive 3G pack” had 2 Ghana Cedis airtime preloaded with amounted to 50MB data. Since this was a special SIM, the Internet tariff is lower, compared to the normal MTN SIMs. In order to compare the data tariff with that of Zain, I loaded 30 Ghana Cedis airtime and the total data derived amounted to 1.2GB. 400MB of data was credited each time I loaded a 10 Ghana Cedis airtime voucher. Note that “Zain Lite” Internet package offers only 1GB of data for 30 Ghana cedis.

The MTN Internet SIM is restricted from making or receiving calls by MTN even though it comes with a regular MTN mobile number. Calling the number, one hears the ringing buzz but there is no reaction on the PC nor any notice of a call. One hears an error message when a call attempt is made from the Internet SIM.

I tried the special SIM on a mobile phone and it worked normally with the exception of not taking nor making calls.

Usage

An MTN 3G package. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao.

I tested the connectivity from McCarthy Hill area in Accra and experienced a signal strength that varied between 95 and 99%, with real download speeds reaching 1.8Mbps. MTN Ghana’s website www.mtn.com.gh loaded the fastest since they host their own website. Real speeds elsewhere might vary according to the time of day (peak or off-peak period), number of people connected to a particular base station, speed of travel (if the user is in motion), and signal strength.

Much of Accra is covered by MTN’s 3.5G network with EDGE filling the gap in patches without 3.5G. Using the service on the outskirts of Accra where only GPRS is available, speeds did not exceed a meagre 5kbps. This implies that MTN Broadband is best used where there is 3.5G network coverage.

According to MTN Ghana’s website:

MTN 3G service is available in Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Takoradi, Tarkwa, Bogoso, Ho, Koforidua, Cape Coast, Kasoa, Winneba, Tamale, Sunyani, Kenyasi, Techiman, Obuasi, Bolgatanga, Wa, Prestea, Damine, Ntoroso, Bibiani, Besomtwi, Bekwai, Aflao, Chirano and still counting.

In summary, MTN’s Mobile Broadband service is ideal is for home or small business users who have limited data usage but want to experience the high speed 3.5G technology offers. The entry fees are affordable as are the data tariffs. It is advisable to check if your area has 3.5G coverage before getting on board. You can do so by manually scanning the networks from a 3.5G phone.

MTN offers another device for connectivity, aside the USB stick:

3.5G F@stLink Router
MTN 3.5 G F@stlink router is a 3G cellular modem,which has an embedded wireless hotspot, with four Ethernet ports and a traditional phone jack. It is perfect for home or small offices and allows a user to sharea connection with multiple users. The router may also serve as a modem using the USB slot to provide a single connection to the user.

Did find this review useful or otherwise? Share your thoughts in the comments area.

No related posts.

The venue for Mobile Web East Africa is the 5 star Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi which is situated just across from Uhuru Park.

Following the unrivalled success of Mobile Web Africa, which was a true “sell-out” conference held in South Africa in October, Mobile Web East Africa is the next in a series of progressive and innovative events to focus on one of the most important technological advances of the 21st century.

Again utilising the exceptionally interactive roundtable format, Mobile Web East Africa promises to be one of the leading events of 2010 in Africa. It is through these roundtable interactions, panel discussions and presentations that the future development of the mobile internet, mobile applications and mobile ecosystem in the region will be discussed and mapped.

The only down side of the roundtable format is that it limits the number of attendees that can come – for Mobile Web East Africa the room is limited to just 120 people so to guarantee your place please register early!

THE KEY THEMES @ MOBILE WEB EAST AFRICA

Mobile Web East Africa will focus on a range of topics relating to the core areas in the development of the mobile ecosystem and how the potential of the mobile device can truly be realised.

These are probably easiest illustrated as a range of key questions as opposed to themes:

1. How will the industry evolve to a point where the vast majority of people have access to the mobile web and the content they want to view?
2. How will the industry fully exploit existing and future opportunities?
3. How can PC or mobile based developers and start-ups monetise their innovation and creativity to grow in to companies that will drive the expansion of the ecosystem?
4. How can Operators, Original Equipment Manufacturers, global associations and other mobile powerhouses assist their smaller partners?
5. How can societal and economic problems be tackled by the development of the capabilities of the mobile device?
6. What handsets, standards, networks and designs will allow consumers to successfully access the content and consume it?
7. How will the consumer be able to discover that content – through a Portal, Application, Browser, Search Engine, Advert, Social Network?

Through a series of presentations, extended panel discussions and networking opportunities these questions will be tackled.
You, alongside 120 of the individuals who are leading the development of the sector in East Africa, will make real progress towards discovering the answers.

Visit http://www.mobileeastafrica.com/ for more details.

Related posts:

1. Free MobileWorld magazines @ Mobile Web East Africa conference
2. Mobile Web usage in Africa grows nearly 170%
3. Cellphones cause call centre boom for banks in Africa

Glo Mobile is set to launch in Ghana soon

Glo Mobile’s entry into Ghana comes at a time when Ghana’s mobile communications industry appears to be saturated already. For a population of about 22 million people, there are presently five active mobile telecommunications services viz: MTN, Tigo, Zain, Vodafone & Kasapa. Records obtained from the National Communications Authority (NCA) website indicate that the 5 cellular networks share some 14,242,476 subscribers amongst themselves in this order: MTN – 52%; Tigo – 23%; Vodafone – 14%; Zain – 9%; Kasapa – 2%. The existing mobile phone service providers already cover all the geographical locations that matter in Ghana with network coverage reaching virtually every human settlement that has a sizeable population or is of some economic importance.

Glo Mobile thus has a very tall order to make enough impact as to attract a sizeable market-share. Despite the obvious challenge, one is safe to assume that Glo Mobile has a strong strategy that would enable them penetrate the sophisticated and relatively matured market. It helps to add that Glo Mobile has the aim of becoming the largest telecommunications provider in Africa. According to media reports, Glo plans to capture 30% of the current 11 million subscriber market within 18 months of launch. My attempt is thus to forecast their entry strategy based on the mobile revolution Glo Mobile has caused in Nigeria, since 2003.

Branding

Glo Mobile has already made its presence felt in Ghana with several branding efforts since 2007 starting with its support of Ghana’s hosting of the 2008 African Cup of Nations.

A Glo-branded bus stop in Accra reading: 'imagine... a day when Ghana is all green'. Photo by Oluniyi David Ajao

In December 2008, Glo Mobile Ghana contracted a five-year sponsorship deal with Ghana’s Premier League until the end of the 2013/14 season. The league has since been known as Glo Premier League.

Glo is a sponsor of Ghana’s senior national football team- the Black Stars and also sponsors the CAF African Player of the Year Award.

Glo Mobile has some banners and billboards at the international airport, as well as other important parts of the capital city Accra.

Internet

The dynamics of mobile phone service has changed globally, over the past few years. Mobile phone networks have now evolved into full telecom service providers with services including telephony, entertainment and internet services. Internet services is where Glo Mobile has the strongest trump card in Ghana. It’s parent company – Globacom – has already launched it fibre optic connectivity’s (Glo-1) landing in Ghana. The cable is expected to carry huge internet bandwidth from Nigeria, through Ghana, to western Europe and vice versa. This automatically gives Glo Mobile Ghana access to unprecedented internet connectivity speeds. The existing fibre servicing Ghana called SAT3 is shared among most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Ghana yet Glo-1 (solely owned by Globacom Ltd) has more than 5 times more capacity than SAT3. I expect Glo Mobile Ghana to maximize the use of the Internet capacity by rolling out a 3.5G network at the very least, and offer juicy internet service bundles. All things being equal, the Internet connectivity speed would exceed the highest capacity of any other current service provider.

Voice

I expect Glo Mobile to offer very competitive voice tariff plans as well as all the value added services possible on a 3.5G network: video calling, voicemail, voice sms, call forwarding, call conference, call divert etc. Phone services offered at the right pricing would attract subscribers to Glo Mobile. One waits to see how Glo can beat Kasapa, in the tariff arena.

Coverage

Network coverage is one area Glo Mobile has reportedly resolved to take the lead in Ghana. Focusing on offering a very wide network coverage can put Glo in a good position to acheiving its ultimate aim. One expects that they would choose the initial towns they cover sensibly, considering that existing networks already cover much of Ghana.

Promotions

One area I expect Glo to explore is offering mouth-watering promotions in a bid to attract new subscribers. The market is already awash with promotions from existing networks offering: cars, houses, cash, mobile phones etc. I expect Glo Mobile to announce promotions that are bigger than existing ones. In this same area, I expect free night calls, free network text messages, and occasional heavy discounts on call tariffs.

Choose your number

Since Glo Mobile would be a new cellular network, one expects that they would auction memorable phone numbers, and allow new subscribers to choose their own phone numbers, based on availability. This also helps to endear those who want to jump ship from other cellular networks or just want an easy-to-remember phone number.

If I am allowed to be selfish, I would expect Glo Mobile to offer a 3.5G network in my residential area considering that none of the existing GSM networks does so.

In summary, I have very high expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana, going by the experience of their parent company in Nigeria and their aggressive drive to be the number player in Africa. Existing success makes their ultimate vision a realistic one.

No related posts.

Apple iPhone 3G S promo image

iPhone here, iPhone there, iPhone everything. Apple’s iPhone, an Internet-connected, multimedia GSM smartphone, has become very popular globally since it was launched in the United States around June 2007. It is now the standard-bearer among keyboard-less smartphones and has inspired several very similar designs from leading mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Samsung Instinct etc.

What makes iPhone most appealing to me is the wide variety of available applications that have been designed to run on iPhones. iPhone now seems to be the standard phone for geeks. In addition to the cute looks and exciting user interface, I am curious to use those applications as many of them are only available on iPhone.

The sleek iPhone is not necessarily the best smartphone out there but for iPhone to be the most popular camera on Flickr (a photo-sharing website), Apple Inc must be doing something right. The iPhone is social-media friendly; it includes many features that make it easy to connect to & share content on social media networks in real time.

You would then wonder, why haven’t I got myself an iPhone before now? iPhone’s marketing model is to make the device available through contracts with cellular networks only. The phones are thus locked to the supplying network and cannot be used outside that network. Unfortunately, Apple does not have such a contract with MTN Ghana, Tigo Ghana, Vodafone Ghana, nor Zain Ghana. I am aware that there are a few unlocked iPhones on the mobile phone market in Ghana but I am not willing to take the risk. I have read reports of iPhones going dead after a software upgrade because they were unlocked.

In May 2008, Vodafone announced that it had signed an agreement with Apple Inc to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa (Vodacom) and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network. There lies my hope. I am hoping Vodafone would extend the agreement with Apple, to cover Ghana since Vodafone has a network here in Ghana. An iPhone is the only thing that would hook me to the Vodafone Ghana network.

Should MTN sign an agreement with Apple and supply iPhones in Ghana, then I’d be among the first to sign a contract and grab the ubiquitous iPhone.

Related posts:

1. My expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana
2. Ghana: Mobile Internet as a credible backup
3. Google’s Gmail offering Free SMS to Ghana, but…

A mobile phone connected to a laptop computer. Image courtesy allaboutsymbian.com

Long before mobile phones became popular in Ghana, fixed lines offered by the national operator Vodafone Ghana (then known as Ghana Telecom) and to a limited extent WESTEL, were widespread among businesses, government offices, organizations and private homes of the elite. When Vodafone introduced dial-up internet and later broadband using ADSL technology, it was a natural progression for most to simply continue relying on Vodafone for connectivity. In Ghana today, most still rely on Vodafone despite the wide range of other options. Matter of fact, most ISPs rely on Vodafone for Internet bandwidth. This is because a certain submarine cable (SAT3) offers super-fast Internet connectivity, at very competitive rates, as compared to connectivity via satellite (VSAT). Most ISPs thus find it economical and technically sensible to route their International traffic via the SAT3 system. The downside is that Vodafone retains exclusivity over that submarine cable and therefore any technical problems from Vodafone directly related to that cable affects all ISPs relying on them for international network connectivity. It thus turns out that majority of the populace rely on Vodafone directly and indirectly, for international bandwidth.

Having created this background, I will explain what is happening as I type this. My main means of Internet connectivity has been down for about 24 hours now. My ISP relies on Vodafone for international connectivity. I have reliable information that Vodafone customers are still able to connect to the internet, albeit at very slow speeds. I am thus forced to switch to MTN and Zain. I have always used MTN for connecting to the Internet, when I am away from my base, or on the move. One might then wonder, why not simply switch to MTN permanently? Cost is the deterring factor. Mobile internet is usually expensive, in this part of the world and that pushes it to the background as backup. It plays that role excellently.

At this point, it is necessary to point out that the main cellular operators MTN, Tigo, Zain have their own international gateway for voice and data traffic and as such do not rely on Vodafone. Thus, downtimes from Vodafone do not usually affect the mobile operators and vice versa.

The following factors make mobile networks viable backups for Internet connectivity:

No monthly fees
What makes mobile internet unusable as the main means of Internet connectivity is what makes it perfect as a backup. Their pay-as-you-go model ensures that users only pay when they connect. There are no monthly fees nor connection fees.

Hardware ubiquity
Mobile phones that come embedded with at least GPRS modems are now mainstream. Users thus do not have to invest in additional hardware but simply need to connect their mobile device to their computer, install the necessary connectivity software and they can connect to the Internet within minutes.

Speed

With the right network and equipment, users can achieve speeds that Vodafone cannot offer to end users at this time. MTN and Zain offer theoretical speeds of at least 3.6 Mbits/s since their respective networks use 3.5G (HSDPA) technology in Accra, Tema and Kumasi. In addition to being within 3.5G coverage area, a user needs a 3.5G compatible mobile equipment (handset or data card) to be able to experience the high speed. Where there is no 3.5G coverage, the connection automatically switches to 3G, EDGE or GPRS, in that order. The lower technologies offer much lower speed with GPRS connectivity speed being comparable to the old dial-up system.

3.5G is still relatively new in Ghana, and as such, coverage is still being expanded into other parts of Ghana. Tigo and Vodafone have already contracted their respective network upgrades to their hardware partners.

Be aware

It is important to note that data rates on mobile networks in Ghana are relatively high. It is thus necessary to watch your data usage and limit your use to essential web activities. Also, some of the cellular networks do offer monthly bundled packages in addition to the pay-as-you-go pricing.

Related posts:

1. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service
2. My expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana
3. Ghana Telecom and Onetouch are now Vodafone Ghana

MTN Ghana

Action: Send a blank text message (SMS) to 686 from your MTN. Save the settings you received, to your phone. Select MTN DATA as default access point.

Related posts:

1. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service
2. MTN Ghana launches MTN Mobile Money
3. Ghana: Mobile Internet as a credible backup

Making a phone call is something that many people take for granted. Yet millions in rural villages around the world simply do not have easy or affordable access to a telephone. The Village Phone concept was developed precisely to help extend access to telecommunications beyond the urban areas.

Started by GrameenPhone in Bangladesh — a client of IFC, IFC is now working with MTN (also an IFC client) and other partners to replicate the Village Phone concept in several African countries, starting with Nigeria.

IFC also collaborated with the Grameen Foundation and other partners to create a Village Phone Replication Manual — essentially a ‘how-to’ resource for setting up a Village Phone project.

Beyond providing much needed communication access, the Village Phone model goes a long way to empower the women operators, spur economic activities and promote entrepreneurialism.

Source: The World Bank

Related posts:

1. MTN Nigeria Expands Roaming to 116 International Networks
2. MTN Nigeria and RIM Launch BlackBerry Solution; BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8700g now available in Nigeria
3. Roaming Into Nigeria

MTN office in Osu, Accra

MTN Ghana announced the launch of their 3.5G network in January 2009. I have noticed that their 3.5G coverage in Accra is patchy but even where there is coverage, I have not been able to connect. I search manually for the 3.5G network and select it but get an error message: “Access not allowed”.

Calls to the customer service did not help much and so I headed to their special 3.5G booth in from of their Osu office. A gentleman there told me it was not open to the public yet. When I asked about the public announcement in January, he stated that was only a “soft launch” and access should be open to the public later this week.

Related posts:

1. Ghana: Mobile Internet as a credible backup
2. My expectations of Glo Mobile Ghana
3. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service

Many mobile phones attempt to do everything from simple texting, to GPS navigation but these phones are better at some things than the others thus the need to classify them. Before now, I had used an i-mate JAQ3 Windows 5 powered-smartphone for business, along with a Nokia 3250 XpressMusic for photography and personal entertainment whilst on the move. I have since upgraded to Nokia E71 smartphone along with a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

What makes the E71 tick?

Nokia E71

Many. The Nokia E71 is a serious business phone ground-up. It comes with a full QWERTY keyboard layout and is enclosed in a strong metallic case. My initial disappointment about the E71 not having a touch screen was quickly dwarfed by its intuitive cursor and comfortable keypad. I find the keypad so comfortable that I find myself sending text messages more often. Matter of fact, I typed the entire text for this article on the Nokia E71.

The smartphone comes with QuickOffice. This mobile version of Office suite software allows you to create or open Word documents, PowerPoint Presentations or Excel Worksheets.

It also comes with a built-in mobile email client and you can also opt for Nokia Email software (Blackberry-like) if the in-built email client does not meet all your email needs. You can send new messages via good-old SMS or MMS.

Being a 3.5G phone, you can access the Internet via 3.5G, 3G, EDGE, or GPRS – subject to network availability. You can also make/receive video calls where there is 3G coverage. The Nokia E71 is capable of handling encrypted G-standard wifi networks.

The call quality on this phone is good enough but my problem is that it fails to detect MTN Ghana’s 3.5G network where there is coverage but my Nokia 5800 detects the same network. The standard earpiece leaves much to be desired and I have since abandoned it. I was able to download and install an Internet radio application on the phone and I listen to Indian melodies by connecting to Indian Internet radio stations through wifi.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic keeps you entertained

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The 5800 is one of the latest in the Nokia XpressMusic series of multimedia devices. XpressMusic is a brand name for series of Nokia phones that are specifically designed for music playback.

True to form, the Nokia 5800 handles music extremely well. It can play digital audio clips encoded in AAC, AU, M4A, MIDI Tones, MP3, MP4, RealAudio, WAV, and WMA among others. It has graphic equalizer, bass boster and stereo widening. It has in-built stereo speakers and a 3.5mm headphones connector. This enables you to connect any headphones of your choice. The default earpiece is abridged and this allows me to occasionally carry the phone in my breast pocket and have the pair of earpieces in my ear lopes without some long cable dangling around my neck. The cable can be extended. The extended version comes with a music controller for playing/pausing as well as forward/rewind buttons.

The wide screen of the phone is used judiciously as video playback is always horizontal. I can switch between wide-screen format and the original dimension of the video. The only drawback is that the in-built RealMedia player is unable to handle popular video formats like WMV, MOV and MPEG. It however plays mobile video formats like MP4 and 3GP. I reckon video format conversion is possible via the Nokia Ovi software but I am yet to try that out.

Equipped with Carl Zeiss lens, the 5800′s camera shines in the area of photography. With a 3.2 mega-pixels capability, I couldn’t ask for more from a mobile device. The photo and video quality are on the high side.

The phone’s massive 8GB Micro SD card (upgradeable to 16GB) gives lots of room for storing audio, video, photos, messages and other files. The phone can even be used as a mass storage device when connected to a computer.

Nokia has demonstrated times without number that it deserves the tag of being the market leader in the area of manufacturing mobile phones. The E71 and 5800 XpressMusic are further proof.

Related posts:

1. Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: a cat with 7 lives
2. MTN Ghana Launches Mobile TV
3. Skype now available for Nokia smartphones in Ovi Store

Zain Africa CEO Mr Chris Gabriel selling a sim card to a new Zain Ghana customer at the flagship store in Osu on Oxford Street in Accra on the day the 3.5G network was launched. Photo courtesy: Zain.com

I listened to Philip Sowah, the Country Manager of Zain Communications Ghana Limited, being interviewed on Joy FM‘s Super Morning show one morning in the last quarter of 2008. It was at the eve of Zain’s network launch in Ghana. One thing I remember clearly was him saying Zain Ghana has so much network capacity, they are scared in a positive way. I wondered to myself: “What is he talking about? Why this much confidence? Is this a marketing gimmick?“  Zain eventually launched and I bought a Zain SIM card, just to experience Ghana’s first 3.5G network not that I was ready to ditch my MTN that had served me quite well for more than 5 years.

I recently bought a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – a 3.5G high-capacity multimedia device from Alireta Mobile – and decided to give my Zain SIM a spin with the mind that should it serve me better, it would replace my MTN eventually. I have been blown away in the past few days and thus I feel compelled to document the positive difference I have experienced.

For well over a decade, MTN (hitherto known as Spacefon, then Areeba) has been the market leader in Ghana in terms of running the most sophisticated cellular network, and offering more useful value added services than its competitors. Not anymore. For the first time, MTN has a tougher competitor to contend with.

3.5G network coverage
MTN Ghana scrambled to unleash their 3.5G network on the Ghanaian airwaves after Zain’s loud entry into the telecom market. Zain’s 3.5G network has a wider coverage than that of MTN, in Accra. I have tested the two from Tete Quarshie interchange to McCarthy hill. From McCarthy hill to Osu. Zain even went a step further to publish their 3.5G network coverage on their website and the publication reveals that 3.5G is available in much of Accra and parts of Kumasi (Ghana’s 2nd commercial hub). Whilst at work, I make sure my phone is permanently on 3G network mode so I can experience the superior call quality and make/receive video calls on Zain. Neither of them has a perfect 3.5G coverage but Zain is ahead, from my checks.

Mobile Internet ‘Activation Fee’
Unlike MTN, Zain does not ask for a 5 Ghana Cedi “activation fee” for internet connectivity to be enabled on one’s SIM. Slot your Zain SIM into a capable GPRS/EDGE/3G/3.5G phone and the settings come tumbling in within minutes. Zain even sends you an MMS welcoming you to “A Wonderful World”.

Call cost summary
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I get the total cost of a call I make, after the call is over. A message displays on my phone informing me of the amount deducted from my account for that call and the account balance I have left. Now, that is transperancy at its best. There is nothing like that on MTN.

SMS
I can update my Twitter account via SMS using Zain. MTN could not deliver SMS to the UK mobile number used by Twitter.com
Zain delivered to the same number, in 2 seconds.

I do not have to retry sending SMS multiple times and pray it goes through each time, on Zain. On the other hand, the little tricks I used on MTN are even begining to fail as I have a hard time sending international SMS from MTN.

Still on SMS, Zain has a neat online service called Zain Web2SMS. I can compose and send SMS from Zain’s website with the added convenience of typing on a computer keyboard. It is faster and better for me. Zain bills my prepaid account for each SMS sent. What is more exciting? Zain offers 5 free Zain to Zain SMS daily. MTN hardly ever gives anything for free. Hardly.

MMS
Zain’s MMS really works. I can zap photos and audio to loved ones’ phones or email accounts. MTN’s MMS has been epileptic for months now.

Missed call notification
Whenever my phone is switched off or out of cellular coverage area, I receive SMS notification from Zain when my phone is back online, informing me of the missed calls. I know MTN has been offering the same service for several years but I could not access it because they restricted it to post-paid subscribers only. I had been attracted to MTN’s post-paid offering for so long but I stayed away because of the $1,500 security deposit they required for international roaming. I am fine with prepaid roaming – thank you very much. I would rather leave my money in a fixed deposit account than hand it to MTN if I have no use for it.

Roaming
Talking about roaming, MTN quickly launched their “Seamless Roaming” service some weeks before Zain launched in Ghana. MTN’s Seamless Roaming is a very similar concept to Zain’s One Network. They both allow local subscribers to access the network of other subsidiaries, outside the home network. Example: Zain subscribers in Kenya can roam into the Zain networks in Tanzania, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Niger without hassles. Traveling subscribers can receive calls/SMS for free, and make calls at the same rate subscribers on the host network pay. MTN’s Seamless Roaming currently works in Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin Republic and Ghana.

Call Divert
You have no idea how useful this service is to me. I can divert calls all my calls unconditionally, or if I am busy, or if I do not answer the calls within a stipulated number of seconds, or if I am out of network coverage area. These settings come with even the most basic GSM phone but MTN has restricted its prepaid subscribers to “Call divert – if out of reach” and even that can only be diverted to their default Voicemail number only. On Zain, there is no single restriction and so I can divert my calls as I deem fit!

Zain Phone number Pre-registration
I was able to search for and book a phone number of my choice, even before the commercial launch. MTN doesn’t offer that convenience.

Over all, I am enjoying the Zain experience so far. What about you? What has been your experience with Zain in Ghana? Share your thoughts by leaving your comments now.

Related posts:

1. Zain selects AIRCOM for network rollout in Ghana
2. Zain, EMS and RIM introduce the Blackberry solution in Ghana
3. Zain launches award winning mobile commerce service ‘Zap’ in Ghana

Texting (sending/receiving SMS) has become mainstream in Nigeria.

In June 2005, Mobile Africa published an article in which Mr. Tayo Ajakaye raised issues (and some very valid ones too) about the quality of value added services being provided by GSM network operators (see: Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?

I followed that article with a rejoinder, RE: Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?, in which I faulted Mr. Ajakaiye’s argument, though I agreed with him that quality of service needed (and gasp – still needs) improvement.

Who uses value added services? Let’s look at two popular ones: Mobile Internet and SMS.

Mobile Internet
Let’s take WAP (mobile internet): Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report for 2008 says that Nigeria was the 2nd fastest growing mobile internet community in the period under review (with 1854% growth), and is currently globally number 12 on the mobile internet usage scale.

An incredibly large number of Nigerians must be using value added services. As far back as 2006, the BBC had reported that in July of that year, 61% of its international traffic from mobile devices (a whopping 13.2 million page views in one month alone) was from Nigeria.

SMS
Let’s not go there. The SMS market is so rich today that there’s no point flogging the statistics. TV reality shows run interactive SMS campaigns, businesses and non-profit organisations use SMS notifications to reach their target audiences, and there are already interactive SMS applications deployed for instance in banking, financial, and web hosting services.

An incredibly huge amount of Nigerians have been using value added services for years.

Are these services perfect yet? Dream on. It is a long road ahead, but warts and all, value added services by GSM (and CDMA) operators have made a huge difference in the Nigeria before GSM and Nigeria after GSM.

Mobile value added services are here to stay.

Related posts:

1. RE: Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
2. Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
3. Comparative Analysis Of MTN And Glo Data Services

Two weeks ago, carrier Multi-Links Telecommunications flipped the switch on a new cell phone network in Lagos, Nigeria, that’s capable of handling hundreds of thousands of more calls at a time than existing cell networks and of downloading e-mails or Web pages at dial-up modem speeds.

And in about three months, Nigerian carrier Rel-Tel will introduce a similar next-generation cell phone service not just to Lagos, but to other parts of the country. Starcomms, another Nigerian carrier, plans to have a similar network in place by year’s end.

Network-equipment seller Nortel Networks, which is supplying Multi-Links with network gear, and Ericsson, which won the Rel-Tel contract, see huge potential in Africa. Less than 10 percent of the population of even the most technologically developed countries has telephone service of any kind. In Nigeria, the figure is less than half of 1 percent.

That translates into hundreds of millions of potential customers. And although trying to sell mobile phones to people who don’t even have old-fashioned landline models might seem like folly, business and infrastructure concerns may give cellular the edge.

Of the two kinds of telephones–traditional landline and cell phones–the wireless variety appears to be a bigger business in Africa, according to Ericsson spokesman Per Altan. The Swedish telephone equipment giant supplies network gear and cell phones to carriers in 30 African nations, and landline phone equipment to carriers in only 20 nations, he said.

The reasons are both economic and regulatory. It’s cheaper for a carrier to lay down a few miles of cable to a base station filled with cellular antennas than to string traditional phone lines to every house and business. Also, the landline phone business in Africa is a near monopoly, with each country having usually just one carrier. Although governments aren’t letting rival landline phone companies in to do business, they are giving licenses to cell phone providers, said Stephan Beckert, research director for market analysis firm TeleGeography.

That means cell phones may indeed win out in the long run. In Morocco, for example, there are already 4.8 million cell phone users among a population of 29 million–four times the number of fixed-line phone users, according to statistics provided by TeleGeography.

But just as in China, a huge untapped population doesn’t necessarily mean instant jackpot-size revenue for phone sellers, Beckert said. Poverty is certainly one of the biggest obstacles keeping phones out of Africa’s hands.

“Look at how many (customers) are in China, then look at the average income,” Beckert said. “You’re seeing factory workers making 60 cents per day. They aren’t going to buy cell phones anytime soon.”

By Ben Charny; Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Related posts:

1. Africa’s Booming Mobile Markets: Can The Growth Curve Continue?
2. Mobile Data: Bridging The Internet Divide In Africa
3. Cellphones cause call centre boom for banks in Africa

Lagos Island, Nigeria

I had to visit home again after a long time away, in October 2004. I had nothing to worry about. It would be like I was still in my country of residence. Armed with my notebook computer, a VISA debit card, few personal effects, and of course, my good old Nokia 7250i, I set off for Ibadan (south west Nigeria), my beloved home town.

Ghana’s Spacefon Areeba announced on November 15th 2003, west Africa’s first prepaid roaming service. I knew I would use the service sooner than later. I went to thier office at Osu to activate this. Setup was easy. In all, I paid the equivalent of $70. About an hour later, I got a text message: “Dear Subscriber, Your account has been activated. To check the balance of your account PLS dial the balance enquiry number”. I got another message: “Your new balance is 40.00 USD. It is valid until 07-Oct-2005.

I decided to travel to Nigeria by road, to experience how the service would be, crossing from Ghana – Togo – Benin Republic – Nigeria. I travelled by ABC Transport, an executive bus service across west Africa. Whilst in Lome (capital of Togo), my phone was still displaying SPACEFON. This is obviously because Aflao, the border town was just a stone throw away, and Spacefon Areeba has its base stations there. I quickly searched for the available networks. Ghana: GH ONETOUCH, GH SPACE, GH MOBITEL and Togo: Togocell, and one other network. I can’t recollect its name.

We proceeded with the journey. As soon as we moved further from Ghana, my phone soon was displaying Togocell. I smiled. Receiving calls was effortless. The other folks in the bus were surprised that in the middle of nowhere, I could still use my mobile phone. In Benin republic, my phone displayed: BeninCell. I had set my phone on “Automatic network selection”. Consequently, the phone searched for the strongest available network. Since much of the pan-African highway was covered by GSM cellular service, I was in touch, most of the way.

In Benin republic, I decided to call my folks in Nigeria that I was on my way. We soon arrived at the Benin-Nigeria border post. We waited in the bus whilst the bus guide went to process our immigration documents. Soon, I received a text message: ” Y’ello and welcome to Nigeria. For more information on Nigeria, please call 15900 for Directory Services. Do enjoy your stay”. Guess who the sender was? MTN NIGERIA. I chuckled. Needless to say that I selected MTN throughout my short stay in Nigeria. The text message I received was enough reason for me.

We soon drove into Badagry, and towards Lagos mainland. All along the highway, my phone was displaying the names of the base stations as we went by. Names like: Okokomaiko, Badagry-3, readily comes to mind. Well, I’m in Lagos and had to quickly head off for Ibadan, since it was getting late. In Ibadan, same experience. Seamless connectivity.

One great edge I had was, Spacefon Areeba had interconnectivity agreements with three out of the four mobile networks in Nigeria. In a nutshell, I could select VMobile, MTN Nigeria or Glo mobile. Meaning, in places where one network was unavailable, I could easily switch to another network. People on Nigerian networks can’t do this. If you are a VMobile subscriber for example, and you are in a place not covered by VMobile, you were out of touch!

At a glance
I could use any of the three networks: VMobile, Glo mobile, MTN Nigeria.
I could receive text messages sent to my phone number in Ghana.
I could forward all my calls to any phone number in the world. I later bought a Glo mobile prepaid “classic pack” for only N1 and forwarded my calls to the glo line. People in Nigeria could reach me by dialling 0805 224 **** whilst people in Ghana could reach me by simply dialling 024 493 ****. Nothing could be easier.

Downsides
I could not send text messages. I solved this by acqiuring a local mobile line (glo) and forwarded my calls and text messages to it.
Any one trying to reach me within Nigeria would still have to make an International call my dialling my line in Ghana, though I was physically in Nigeria! This is not cost-effective. Same solution. I got a glo mobile line.
I had to pay $2 each time I forwarded my calls to any phone line. I had to do this just once though.

Cost:
Registration: $30
Units: $40
Making calls: $0.50 per 30 seconds
Receiving calls: $0.25 per 30 seconds

In a nutshell, Spacefon Areeba’s HOP service is good if you would be leaving Ghana for a short while. You are only in touch during the life cycle of your credit on SNAP. You are disconnected as soon as your prepaid credit on SNAP expires. On the postpaid package however, you are connected as long as your $1500 deposit as carry you.

I enjoyed the rest of my stay in Nigeria. It was virtually like I never left Ghana, as I was constantly in touch, making and receiving calls as usual.

Related posts:

1. MTN Nigeria Expands Roaming to 116 International Networks
2. MTN Nigeria and RIM Launch BlackBerry Solution; BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8700g now available in Nigeria
3. ‘Glo-ing’ In Nigeria

First Generation of Mobile Telephony (1G)
These basically entails the earliest technology that was deployed with the initial advent of mobile telephony. These include: AMPS and TDMA. 1G was introduced to Africa in the early 1990s and is gradually being phased-out and replaced by 2G technology.

Second Generation of Mobile Telephony (2G)
This was the next phase of development after the 1G mobile technology. Research into the development of 2G technologies started as way back as the early eighties and saw real deployments in 1992. It was developed with the aim of correcting much of the problems that came with the earlier mobile phone systems. It is far more efficient with voice and data transmission and comes with enhanced security. 2G is a digital technology. Mobile networks in Africa mainly deploy well-known systems like GSM (900 / 1800MHz band) and cdmaOne.

Advanced Second Generation Technologies (2.5G)
High data requirements amongst consumers necessitated the improvement of the available technologies. Engineers tried to figure how they could ‘squeeze’ more data (information) through the available mobile network infrastructure. This saw the advent of technologies like GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, CDMA2000. These improved versions of the 2G systems have brought much more improved functionality, possibilities and real-life applications. Most mobile phone networks in Africa, at time of writing, are still on the plain 2G system of GSM and CDMA. Some though are now aggressively migrating to the higher 2.5G platforms and even 3G! Needless to say that much of the rapid developments are witnessed in South Africa, Egypt and to some extent, Nigeria.

Deployment of 2.5G in Africa
The most common of the 2.5G technology deployment in Africa is GPRS. This is more because of its affordability with deployment. More GPRS-enabled handsets are widely available in many of Africa’s fast growing mobile phone market.
South African networks MTN and Vodacom had launched GPRS by 2002. GPRS has long been available on Egypt’s mobile phone networks Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt (Click GSM).
It is currently still being deployed in Nigeria by the mobile phone networks. Nigeria’s glo mobile took the lead by launching Nigeria’s first GPRS network in August 2004 followed by Mtel in April 2005. Kenya’s Safaricomm followed suit in April 2005.
Other networks are quiet about time of deployment.

Third Generation of Mobile Telephony (3G)
This is the latest form of mobile telephony technology that is currently gaining widespread deployment globally, especially in Europe and the Far East. It was designed to provide the best platform for mobile communication and can support features like Video Telephony, High Speed Internet access (burst speed of 384kbps), real-time audio & video broadcast and more.

Deployment of 3G in Africa
This is still a relatively new technology and as such has witnessed very limited real-time deployment in Africa. The earliest entry into this arena was EMTEL, a mobile phone company based in Mauritius. They launched Africa’s first 3G-capable network in November 2004. Following closely is South Africa’s Vodacom which deployed the first 3G network in South Africa in December 2004. MTN South Africa is also gearing up to launch an EDGE-capable network in early 2005, taking the lead from Spacefon Areeba who announced that they would be launching Africa’s first EDGE-capable network as way back as April 2004.

Fourth Generation of Mobile Telephony (4G)
4G promises High-speed mobile wireless access with a very high data transmission speed, of the same order of magnitude as a local area network connection. It is still under-going development and test are only currently running in Japan. It promises much more possibilities and applications and needless to say that this technology is currently not available anywhere in Africa. You can always check back here for developments as they unfold.

Related posts:

1. Africa’s Booming Mobile Markets: Can The Growth Curve Continue?
2. Mobile Data: Bridging The Internet Divide In Africa
3. Ghana: Mobile Internet as a credible backup

Background

According to Wikipedia, “Roaming is a general term in wireless telecommunications that refers to the extending of connectivity service in a network that is different than the network with which a station is registered. … for cellular phones, when you take your phone to an area where your service provider does not have coverage (eg, another country).”

According to the GSM Association, “Roaming is defined as the ability for a cellular customer to automatically make & receive voice calls, send & receive data, or access other services when travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network.”

In this context, we are focusing on International Prepaid Roaming only.

In February 2004, ECOWAS organised a Regional Telecommunications Forum on Roaming and Cross-boarder Connectivity. This was in recognition of the importance of cross border and overall telecommunications connectivity as the key to the economic and social development and integration of the West Africa sub-region.

As way back as 1997, heads-of-state and government of ECOWAS nations, called on cellular phone operators in the sub-region to sign roaming agreements in order to facilitate seamless communications across all the 16 ECOWAS countries.

It appears like things are gradually changing for the better.

Africa’s first Prepaid International Roaming
South Africa’s Vodacom premiered this service with its offering in October 2003. When Vodacom launched the service, their prepaid customers were able to make and receive calls using their existing prepaid SIM cards when they travel to Namibia and roam with mobile phone operator MTC. There were neither deposits nor high accounts that customers had to be worried about which makes prepaid roaming of real benefit in terms of controlled spending.

Vodacom has since expanded its prepaid roaming service to Kenya (via Safaricom), Mozambique and Tanzania. Vodacom prepaid subscribers are able to roam into these countries.

West Africa’s first Prepaid Roaming
Spacefon Areeba unveiled the first prepaid roaming in west Africa in November 15th 2003. It tagged this service HOP.

Related posts:

1. Africa’s Booming Mobile Markets: Can The Growth Curve Continue?
2. Mobile Web usage in Africa grows nearly 170%
3. Why I prefer Zain to MTN

Glo mobile

Glo Mobile, the GSM subsidiary of Globacom Nigeria Limited has been a great player in the telecom industry since it was launched in 2003.

First came the rather aggressive adverts on all the available media in the country: TV, Radio, Newspapers, Magazine and even the Internet. Nigerians were left to wonder what this new entrant could offer. Glo Mobile made promises, to be Nigeria’s best mobile phone operator, to break the hitherto existing duopoly of VMobile Nigeria (then known as Econet Wireless Nigeria) and MTN Nigeria. The promises looked good. One thing was certain, Glo had the financial stamina to ‘walk the talk’.

Nearly two years later, Glo Mobile has completely change the scenerio of the GSM telecom sub-sector in Nigeria, and the story has never been the same again.

First came the adverts that were all rather indigenous. Glo mobile made use of local Nigerian musicians to drive home the point. Notable amongst the musicians were King Sunny Ade and Daddy Showkey. Moreover, Glo’s flagship colour is limish green; this Nigerians could identify with, since the colour of the country’s flag was Green – White – Green. Moreover, Glo made very colourful posters and bill boards with the inscriptions, “Glo with Pride”, “Lets glo with you” etc.

As events unfolded, it became crystal clear to everyone that Glo mobile was in, for real business. Glo launched Nigeria’s most advanced cellular network, a 2.5G (advanced form of 2nd generation phone network that enables a cellular network to offer GPRS and MMS). GPRS was free for Glo’s subscribers for over a month.

No other cellular network has been able to match the wide variety of Value Added Services offered by Glo. None. Their wide variety of value-added-services include: MultiMedia Messaging Service (Glo MMS), Mobile Internet (via GPRS), Magic Plus (an SMS-based service that gives subscribers access to a host of information, commerce and entertainment content), Ringtones & logos, Txt2Email, Email2Txt, Text Messaging, Personalized Voicemail service, Roaming (for both prepaid & postpaid subscribers).

Other services on the glo mobile network include: Calling Line Identification Presentation (CLIP), Call Waiting and Call Hold, Call Forwarding, Call Barring, International Roaming and Conference Call.

Glo Mobile’s main objective appears to be “Building the biggest and best network in Africa”. This is on their website. Little wonder. They have since demonstrated this. As at time of writing, Glo mobile’s network has 3.3 million subscribers, and has coverage in 31 states (out of 36) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, making it the only network in Nigeria to have almost covered the entire country in less than two years. The rapid spread has been adjudged as one of the fastest in Africa.

Glo mobile is currently running a promotion which it tagged “Everyone Is an Instant Winner”. In the current promo, Glo Mobile is giving 15% instant bonus credit for every recharge. Based on its monthly recharge volume, the payout on this promo for Glo may be in the region of N500 million monthly.

The present Glo Mobile offering therefore appears to over-shadow that of any other promotion in the country, particularly in the telecommunication industry.

The Instant winner promo also differs from other promotions because every Glo subscriber is a winner.

Glo Mobile emerged with a strong vision to make a difference in the Nigerian mobile sub-telecom sector. They are doing just that. They have changed the industry for the better. The subscribers now have cause to smile.

Related posts:

1. MTN Nigeria
2. Roaming Into Nigeria
3. MTN Nigeria Expands Roaming to 116 International Networks

However, that article gives the impression that the right thing for those operators to do is to ignore value-added services altogether until they are in a better position to make them work right. I may be wrong on that impression, and stand to be corrected, but I am of the opinion that there is a better approach. Permit me to comment on a few things touched in that article, as someone who has used a number of those services regularly for years.

Mr Ajakaye says, During the early stages of its operation in Nigeria, MTN in collaboration with a IT solution provider launched the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The service did not really fly. Not many people could perform the smallest task online, like checking e-mail, through the system. The fault might not be that of the telecom operator.

It just is not true that not many people could use MTN’s WAP and CSD platform. It was (and still is) rather a case of many people not being able to afford to use it. The tariff was (and still is) madness, in my opinion. However, I used it consistently, browsing WAP and managing my office mails at home and on the move. As a matter of fact, MTN’s CSD service is one value-added service that was (and still is) more reliable than the core services of many ISPs in Nigeria that I know of.

Mr Ajakaye further says, What Okoruwa did not include is that the problem might be with the inefficent way these VAS are offered in Nigeria. And after trying one out with money gone and no results found, Nigerian subscribers are learning to restrict themselves to just the basic use of the phone as much as they could.

Inefficient service delivery is not news to Nigerians, and so Value-added services should not be singled out when this is concerned. Many institutions and sectors are inefficient in the delivery of both their core areas of competence and value-added services: banks, insurance companies, ISPs, press and media organisations, religious organisations. It has been a general problem our society needs to address.

For example, when VSAT and other internet access technologies were first introduced to Nigeria, those of us who are in the know can attest to the fact that internet access inefficiently delivered to end-users. Terribly long downtimes were (and in a number of cases, still are) the order of the day. Internet access is not a value-added service for ISPs, who were licensed for that purpose, yet they delivered poorly. We did not condemn internet access in Nigeria to the graveyard because of those experiences. Today, things are slightly better. I submit that service delivery of value-added services will get better with time, with experience, and as competition grows.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have tasted of the bitterness of disappointment from some of these operators, but I must admit that my life and work has had real value added to them because those services exist at all. That’s why I say, Let the show go on.

I liken this issue of value-added services (and all modern services in general) to the relationship called marriage. In the early years, those involved may have to do a lot of shaving off the rough edges of each other, and with some tolerance, balanced confrontation and determination to make things work, the relationship not only lasts but gets better… and better… and better.

Mr Ajakaye wrote, A telecom consultant who spoke with THISDAY on phone Tuesday night said “I cannot immediately think of one that has added value to what service.”

If THISDAY had spoken with me, they would have had a different answer. I have a fast-growing list of a number of people who are able to work better, more efficiently and more conveniently as a result of the value-added services on both GSM and CDMA networks in Nigeria. These crop of people see an opportunity and are taking advantage of it daily. And that, I believe, answers the all-important question that Mr Ajakaye asked, “Who uses them?”

Related posts:

1. Nigeria: Value Added Services are here to stay
2. Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
3. Comparative Analysis Of MTN And Glo Data Services

In this saddening in this light to observe that a significant number of GSM operators in Nigeria only pay lip service to customer support. This is more of a problem as we see a shift from plain voice to mobile data. I’ll shed more light on how I arrived at this conclusion.

Scene 1: Kingsley purchases a GPRS-smartphone for use on the GloMobile network. He subscribes for full internet service so he can browse the Web and access emails on his smartphone. But he is told by Customer Care that the only way he can browse the Web is to use his phone as a modem with a laptop! Amused, Kingsley takes his laptop to them as requested, and they were not able to configure it and get it to work with their GPRS service.

Scene 2: Yomi has signed up for full internet access via GPRS on the same network. He has put in all settings, yet the service does not work. From the error message his Sony Ericsson P800 is giving (Service not activated), it is clear that GloMobile is yet to do something at their end. After weeks of calling customer care, he is finally asked to come over to their office half-way across the city of Lagos from his location.

Insisting that the trip was not necessary to resolve the issue, he is told that was the only thing to do. Yomi drives down, and after customer care has taken a look at the settings on his phone, they comment that everything was in order and then take a look at their systems. They discover that they had not activated the poor fellow’s line on the “switch”. Another unnecessary and wasteful trip.

Yomi soon upgrades his handset to the Nokia 9500, which is in effect a laptop that fits into your palm. Speaking with Customer care once, he is asked what laptop he uses. He replies that he just uses his Communicator to browse, manage email, and run Instant messaging, and is shocked when the representative on the line responds in amazement how that was possible.

Scene 3: A young lady takes a handset to the nearest MTN Friendship Centre to have it configured for WAP. She is told that the server was down and so the handset could not be configured. In less than an hour she narrates the story to a friend, who promptly takes the handset, inputs the settings and starts browsing with it. Whether or not the server was actually down had nothing to do with configuring WAP on a phone, and Custmer Care did not know that.

Scene 4: Wale calls Customer Care on Vmobile to enquire whether it was true that the network now had a GPRS service. The representative replies in the affirmative and proceeds to tell Wale to send a specified text to a dedicated number to receive the service configuration OTA (Over-the-air). Wale sends the text and is surprised to discover that the settings sent to him are for plain old Circuit-switched data, a slow dial-up protocol. Till the time of writing this article, Vmobile is yet to launch GPRS on its network.

Scene 5: DK purchases one of the newer Sendo phones for use on GloMobile. Customer Care informs him that the handset cannot work on its network (we have been wondering why, since it was not locked to another network and was both WAP and GPRS-enabled). DK visits http://www.gosmartmobile.com where he finds WAP settings for his network. He puts in the settings, makes some adjustments on my recommendation – and months after he is still browsing.

Okay. Enough examples. All scenarios above are real events. I made none up. Of course, there are more, but what’s the use going on and on?

The question on my mind is, How much training do Customer Care representatives get? Did these guys apply for those jobs just to put some money in their pockets every month or do they really have an interest in what they do?

I may not have the answers straight up, but I do know that what we observe in subscribers’ interaction with Customer Care officers on our networks leaves much to be desired. These operators should stop caring about us in word alone. They may need to cut down on those ad budgets and put more funds in ensuring that the customer gets the kind of support he deserves.

Related posts:

1. Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
2. ‘Glo-ing’ In Nigeria
3. Comparative Analysis Of MTN And Glo Data Services

Value-added services are those service outside the core services provided by service providers. Just as the name implies, a value-added service is supposed to add value to the subscribers’ use of an operator’s network. These services have unique characteristics and they relate to other services in a completely different way. They also provide benefits that core services can not.

But accordidng to Mr. Calixthus Okoruwa, the CEO XLR8, who organised a VAS expo, e-NNOVATE early this year, value added services are now generically defined to refer to all other uses to which technological gadgets can be put, outside of the use for which they were primarily designed. He said the mobile phone is the prime example here as it was primarily designed for voice communication. If it now enables a user to link up with his e-mail or enables him to conduct banking transactions even while on the move, then of course these are certainly value added services.

Value-added services continue to be developed by the day. The more popular ones include call holding, call waiting, call barring, call divert, voice mail, SMS, fax messaging, Calling Line Identification, call conferencing, cell information, and all those services involved in mobile VAS. These include non-voice advanced messaging services such as SMS, MMS, Mobile Instant Messaging, and Unified Messaging. There are also wireless data such as GPRS, WAP, mobile gaming and Push To Talk.

Some characteristics of a VAS which experts have mentioned include that it is not a form of basic service but rather adds value total service offering. It could stand alone in terms of profitability and where properly offered, it could stimulates incremental demand for core service. A value-added service could stand alone operationally. It does not cannibalize basic service unless clearly favourable. It can be an add-on to basic service, and as such, may be sold at a premium price, and it may provide operational and/or administrative synergy between or among other services.

Basically, experts point to two types of VAS. The first service type are those value-added services that stand alone from the core service of the operator. These are often provided as an optional service along with voice services, although they could be offered and used by themselves without the voice service. A good exapmle of this is the SMS.

The licencing authority in many cases licence the operator to provide the basic voice services. The operator adds such other services that may attract subscribers to his network.

During the early stages of its operation in Nigeria, MTN in collaboration with a IT solution provider launched the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The service did not really fly. Not many people could perform the smallest task online, like checking e-mail, through the system. The fault might not be that of the telecom operator.

In recent times, virtually all the operators in the Nigerian telecom industry has come to town with one value-added service or the other. The GSM operators had been introducing one value-added service after the other. The competition, observers have noted, is in the launching the services, not in effectiveness. For example, one of the operators who offer GPRS could keep a subscriber waiting for more than 30 days before he is connected. After the acknowledgment by the network that your request had been received and was been processed, the operator goes to sleep till the following month. Yet before you could finish pronoucing GPRS, the same operator could come out launching another value-added service.

The PTOs are not left behind in this craze to launch value-added service. Many PTOs have launched Internet service, but subscribers cannot point to more than two that are working well. How many of those are working well? Some of them promised SMS, but they could only send that within their individual networks.

Although there was the culture of promise without delivery by operators, Okoruwa believes that “this area is a potentially exciting aspect of the technology industry – not just telecoms, but the entire technology industry – which operators are currently only just scratching. I say it promises to be very exciting because of its immense potential to add real value to the lives of consumers and in so doing, in helping to create new revenue streams for technology players – telecom companies, but also content providers, web developers, banks and financial institutions, sundry retailers and service companies and entrepreneurs of different hues.”

What’s more Okoruwa says, is that that for a country like Nigeria, an additional benefit would be that value added services in a very subtle yet potent manner, encourage Nigerians to embrace technology in their every day lives. Children who have had to enroll for WAEC or JAMB online or check their results in the same manner, come back home to regal their parents and older ones of tales of the new fangled technology.

Admitting that Nigerians might not be utilising these services to the utmost as yet, Okoruwa says the reason is that voice telephony is the primary driver telecommunications and after a prolonged scarcity of basic telephone amenities with attendant huge unmet need for telecoms, telecom companies have understandably and to resounded commercial success, focused attention on voice.Also, voice has also been the predominant concern of the consumers.

What Okoruwa did not include is that the problem might be with the inefficent way these VAS are offered in Nigeria. And after trying one out with money gone and no results found, Nigerian subscribers are learning to restrict themselves to just the basic use of the phone as much as they could. Many subscribers have had their money deducted for SMS that was not delivered. If this could happen to simple SMS, they wonder what would happen to GPRS and other high-sounding service.

It would seem the NCC has no standard on the quality of these value-added services. The regulator did not licence them to offer anything than basic voice telephony. So, it would be difficult to start grading them for a service your licence did not require them to provide. At the last published report on network quality in Nigeria, NCC concentrated just on the voice aspect. Which is just as well, analysts argue, because for an operator finding it difficult to provide quality voice service, adding several value-added services is an unnecssary distraction.

A telecom consultant who spoke with THISDAY on phone Tuesday night said “I cannot immediately think of one that has added value to what service.” It is a view shared by most subscribers, all the noise aside.

Related posts:

1. Nigeria: Value Added Services are here to stay
2. RE: Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
3. Comparative Analysis Of MTN And Glo Data Services

Acquiring the service
Spacefon Areeba announced on Joy FM’s Super Morning show, its new GPRS offering and entreated subscribers to register for their on its web site: www.spacefon.com I did so, after two weeks and wait ed…

The online form basically requested for information about the subscriber: Name, Address, Number, Travel destinations within Ghana and Phone model.

After waiting for over a month, I received a phone call from Spacefon Areeba’s head office with a request that I reported at their office the following day. I did. A gentleman at the customer service configured my Nokia 7250i within minutes.

The internet connection was however down, when he finished configuring the phone, and activating the SIM card. The phone kept displaying “Page not found” after several attempts to view WAP pages. He assured me that it would be on again in a few minutes. This turned out to be true as I was soon surfing WAP pages soon after I left the Spacefon Areeba head office.

He also printed out some WAP sites that I could surf, for me. How nice of him.

Requirements
To use the GPRS, the subscriber must have a GPRS-enabled phone. A GPRS PC card can be used if the subscriber intends to connect a laptop computer.
The subscriber’s SIM card has to be activated for GPRS by the service provider. (Spacefon Areeba in this case)

Setting up my laptop

Nokia 7250i

I spent the next couple of days trying to figure out how to connect my laptop to the Internet via this GPRS. My Nokia 7250i comes with Infra-red (Irda) connectivity and so does my sub-notebook computer, Toshiba Portege 3490CT.
Connecting the phone to the laptop via infrared was done in no time as I had read the Nokia’s manual, extensively. I also gathered useful information from internet Web sites I followed the steps below:

1. I downloaded the software for my Nokia 7250i from the Nokia web site: www.nokia.com The software is required, for the phone to be able to act as a modem through which the computer would connect to the Internet.
2. Installed the software on my Toshiba portege 3490CT laptop.
3. Opened Network Connections from the Control panel. I use Windows XP SP1, by the way.
   Under Network Tasks, I clicked on Create a new connection.
   The dialing number (phone number) for Nokia cell phones is *99#
4. After setting up the dial-up connection, I double-clicked on the Connection’s icon and was connected within 15 seconds.

Toshiba Portege 3490CT

The Firefox browser I used worked fine, when I configured the Network connection as “Connected directly to the Internet”.

Availability
The GPRS has been available since then despite outage for a few days into the new year 2005.
It works best from 10PM till 8AM on weekdays and Sundays from 9AM to 12PM when obviously Spacefon Areeba’s network has substantially lower voice traffic. Technically, the amount of voice traffic on a mobile phone network at any given time, affects the quality of service for GPRS. Voice is given priority over data traffic. Thus, using GPRS on a congested network during peak hours is quite an ordeal.

Usability
The service is generally good for normal web browsing. The speed is comparable to that of the conventional dial-up though it can be much faster when the network is not congested. I tested the speed, using a Firefox plug-in I downloaded on Firefox’s web site and the indicator was 20kbps. When downloading, the speed falls substantially to 2kbps. It works fine with MSN Messenger, YAHOO! Messenger, FTP, Outlook Express and all other software that depend on an Internet connection, on my laptop.

Browsing WAP pages on my mobile phone is also seamless but depends on whether the network is congested or not.

Downsides
The service usually becomes very slow or completely off, on weekdays, from 4:30PM to around 9:30PM due to network congestion. Calling around this time on Spacefon Areeba is also hectic.

Summary
The service is good for occasional email and general browsing when you are out and about. Web sites heavy with Flash animations should not be attempted at peak hours, as it could take forever to download. It is not a service for the heavy internet user as billing is likely to be per Mb and could eventually dig a deep hole in your pocket.

Related posts:

1. A review of MTN Ghana Mobile Broadband service
2. How to obtain MTN Ghana GPRS settings
3. Needed: A New Approach To Customer Support

I will not be comparing WAP services here, as they are pretty limited in use to the business person, but full data services giving you access to the Web, email and FTP etc.

Getting Started
On MTN, you only need pay a one-time fee of N1,500 to be signed up for Enhanced Data and Fax. This is whether you are on prepay or a contract. It makes no difference.

With Glo, you have to be a contract user to get access to full internet access. Minimum initial expenditure: N9,750, plus all the hassles of a contract.

Tariffs
Glo GPRS is charged by the byte (20kobo to 35 kobo per kilobyte) rather than per time, making it generally more cost-effective than MTN’s per second or per minute browsing charges (same as regular call rates). But again on MTN, there are at least 3 BoosterCard options available to help you lower your browsing costs.

Speed Issues
MTN runs a CSD platform with speeds limited to 9.6kbps. In practice it works well for retrieving and sending mails and viewing low-bandwidth sites.

Glo touts its GPRS speed at 40kbps. In reality it is much slower – barely faster than a normal CSD connection, and many times just totally unuseable.

Service Availability and Quality
From the experience I have had on both platforms, MTN Enhanced Data/Fax is available everywhere I have been. It does not matter where I am in Lagos, I am able to browse. Last year, I took a trip to and from Warri and it worked flawlessly all through – on the road and at my destination.

The same cannot be said for Glo GPRS however. Even within Lagos, there are very few locations GPRS works. For example, a drive between Ojodu and Surulere is a shocking revelation. The GPRS signal is there, but more often than not it does not work. I won’t even think of attempting a trip to Warri.

Extras
Glo GPRS allows you to send and receive Multi-media messages – a souped-up version of SMS that includes audio, video, and animations. On the other hand, MTN Data/Fax gives you fax and data access. You get 2 extra numbers – one for fax and the other for data. Hence, if you use a Communicator like I do, you do not need a fax machine, as the communicator series have it built-in.

Conclusion
Let’s face it, besides the more convenient tariffs on Glo GPRS when and where it works, there is very little difference in what you get from the two networks. In addition, MTN gives you fax alongside Web and email access.

But if my life were to depend on it, I’d choose MTN’s Enhanced Data/Fax. A little more expensive, but it wins by a clear margin when it comes to reliability and availability.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Data: Bridging The Internet Divide In Africa
2. Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?
3. RE: Value Added Services: Who Uses Them?

Elegantly dressed and looking responsible, a lady in his late thirties came out of a shop in Ikeja recently with a baby on a cot.

She put the baby in her brand new Volkswagen Bora car seat, and drove off, all while chattering inanely on her mobile phone.

Wonder why she could not have finished the conversation before driving off, especially with a baby in the car?

What if just 100 metres away, a mini passenger bus popularly known as Danfo traveling at a higher speed had came face to face with her car?

Well, this ludicrous kind of selfish stupidity can only happen in Nigeria where it seems some people have axes to grind against every law.

Driving in Nigeria, has since ceased to be an exercise of skill and responsibility and instead the car has become an extension of the daily lives of Nigerians who consider it their given right to resist any attempt to legislate against the citizens’ domain on four wheels.

Today in major cities it is a familiar sight of people driving while holding and talking on their mobile phones.

Using a hand held mobile phone and driving is illegal in many countries including Nigeria but few are usually prosecuted in the country for dangerous or careless driving.

There are a lot of accidents with fatal injuries and death caused by using mobile phones while driving have occurred but there are no official record linking these accidents to talking while driving.

Driving a car while talking on mobile phones is just crazy, it is the easiest way to put the driver and other people in danger.

Cell phones no doubt have become increasingly popular over the last few years. In fact, it is amazing to find out that as many people as possible in the cities have cell phones.

Cell phones are, also lifesavers to have in case of emergencies but the unpalatable features especially the wrong uses are as disturbing.

Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), the agency in charge of road safety in the country had in its determination to curb the rate of road accidents in the country, released books and audio tapes aimed at instilling proper road culture in children, young adults and motorists.

Corps Marshal, Major General Haladu Hannaniya (rtd), said the book entitled “Road Safety Tips for Children and Young Adults” was designed to inculcate sound road culture in the minds of the youth.

“The drivers and exposed road users would learn defensive driving techniques and tips on safe driving while children and youths would imbibe sound road culture early enough,” he said

The agency has also reported that many drivers now recognize that cell phones are the biggest distraction while driving – more than time pressures, eating, drinking, using the radio or changing music.

Even the most careful of drivers will be distracted by a phone call or text message – it affects concentration and anticipation.

Talking on a mobile phone while driving however, compromises the safety of everybody

Proprietor of Dan Driving School, Lagos Mr. Dan Ebi said that talking while driving affects the ability of the driver to concentrate and anticipate the road ahead, thereby putting the driver and other road users at risk.

Some argue that talking on a phone is worse than driving drunk and have called for stiffer penalties for offenders.

Others however say that the claim that it is more dangerous than drunk-driving is wrong and will not help to educate motorists about the dangers of inattentive driving.

Mr. Ebi insists that using a mobile phone impairs driving adding that any driver will be distracted by a phone call or text message.

Medical Director of Care well Clinic, Egbe, Dr. Toyin Odediran, agreed and said that phone conversations have been shown to cause a cognitive disruption in drivers.

According to him, the driver’s brain is engaged with the conversation, even when he pretends to be paying attention to the road

A mobile subscriber and concerned Nigerian, Mr. Jude Kpoi Uzozie said that he is looking for a day when the use of mobile phones when driving, both hands held and hands-free, become as socially unacceptable as drunk driving.

He said that it requires discipline on the part of the users and sense of responsibility by the government to ensure enforcement and sanctions.

The use of the so-called hands free has also been called to question especially after a study by University of Rhode Island.

The study though very controversial, looked at the eye-movements of drivers and found them to have a reduced field of view, or tunnel vision.

Using a head-mounted eye-tracking device, the researchers concluded that tunnel vision caused by mobile phone use continues well after the conversation ends, perhaps because drivers are still thinking about the conversation.

Hands-free phones have been available since the mid-1990s. Most of these devices are connected by a wire to a regular cell phone, but a few wireless models use short-wave radio technology to exchange signals with the host phone.

There are however, people who argue that the ability of someone to deal with a distraction varies from individual to individual and from circumstance to circumstance.

The FRSC said that the safest approach on wheels is to switch off the phone.

“This is, by far, the safest approach. Use your voicemail or message service to access missed calls when you are able to stop or at the end of your journey” the FRSC said

According to the agency, “If you must use your phone while travelling, always stop in a safe place, or equip your vehicle with a ‘hands-free’ system. Be aware that even when you use a ‘hands-free’ system, your mind will not be fully on driving but on the conversation, so keep calls as short as possible.”

Also remember to inform the caller that you are driving and that you wish to keep the conversation short and simple.

We must however need to be careful not to lose the proved safety benefits of mobile phones when attempting to avoid what is just one of the many everyday distractions faced by motorists.

by Ken Nwogbo from Lagos.

No related posts.

Phew!!, you sigh with relief and your loyalty towards the airline grows. In another part of town, Anne, a banker, is about leave office.

She uses her mobile phone for a quick check of her bank balance, and the local weather forecast for the evening. Anne is due to meet her sister Mici for tea.

At 5.30 she receives a text message telling her that the five star hotel just across her office has a ‘Happy Hour’, when drinks are cheaper and bites are free.

She ignores it and quickly deletes it.

Anne has given her mobile service provider permission to relay such texts. She instead opts for window-shopping and checks to see which shops have sales and special offers. She then discovers that a shoe shop is offering half the price on a brand she loves.

Anne does not know the shop, but with a few clicks on her mobile phone, she is able to obtain precise directions from where she is! Mobile commerce is becoming a reality. In this era, powerful forces and technologies have come towards us with unprecedented speed.

Penetration speed has exceeded all expectations. Annual sales of mobile phones have surpassed sales of TVs and PCs, and have reached over 600 million users in the world: and growth continues. In Africa alone there are now over 50 million mobile phone subscribers.

The number of users globally are already above that of PC owners, and will, in few years, surpass even that of households owning TVs.

The capabilities of electronic business, combined with the coverage offered wireless devices, carries the potential of drastically changing the way we live, react, interact, buy play, and operate businesses. Information and content, be it text, data or images, will be leveraged to deliver customised services in a manner unseen before.

Mobile commerce technically refers to any transaction with a monetary value, that is conducted via a mobile telecommunications network.

This represents all commerce transactions, both in business-to-business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C). Mobile commerce is a result of convergence between two or more technologies, such as wireless communications and the internet.

Emerging new media technologies will influence when and how potential mobile commerce is unlocked in the developing countries.

Currently mobile commerce (m-commerce) is in place in Europe and Asia. Faster wireless access and packet switched technology offers fast and full-time (always on connectivity). Upgrading of the network infrastructures to 2.5 or 3G will enable a bigger range of bandwidth intensive applications.

A number of handset devices are being developed to cater for customer needs. These are PDAs – mobile phone combinations smart phones with micro browsers, and others with enhanced functions and video capabilities.

Display and input capabilities are expected to improve overtime.

We also expect to see devices with the functionality just suited for specific applications such as tracking and tracing services. Mobile location-based technologies such as GPS services, provide ability to locate mobile devices in an area within a radius of less than 30m.

Telecoms: Obviously the telecom sector being the main builders and carriers of high-speed data and Internet access are the major players in m-commerce. In Europe, telecom companies will have invested over $300 billions over a period of two to three years in licence acquisition and building networks for mobile-data transmission. In Asia telecoms are doing the same. The US has also followed suit.

Media and Entertainment: These will be a major component of m-commerce. It is generally expected that they will account for more than 50 per cent of the traffic, ranging from downloadable music, games and location specific needs.

Motor Industry: Auto manufacturers might find themselves transforming into mobile service providers. They will leverage their brands and offer attractive data services. Auto makers are known to have the longest experience in developing effective devices, and this might create a situation where motorists prefer in-built car mobile services.

Financial Services: The mobile device is undoubtedly the unmatched channel for providing financial and banking services. This device also gives financial institutions a great opportunity to expand customer relations through other services alongside core financial services. It is certain that huge potential exists in m-commerce but the key questions remains how quickly these players move.

It’s time to get ready for the mobile commerce explosion

Pauline Wangui is a telecoms strategy analyst.

No related posts.

Mobile Mania
Mobile telephony is now firmly entrenched as the predominant mode of telephony in almost every African nation. By 2001 mobile subscriber numbers had increased at such a rate that they had overtaken those of fixed lines, making Africa the first region of the world to achieve this. By the end of 2003, mobile users are estimated to have reached 51 millions, according to ITU, and are forecast to grow to 67 millions by the end of 2005. In just the first few years of the new millennium, Africa has added more telecommunication users than in the whole of the previous century. Africa is currently the world region with the highest level of mobile communications growth. The vast majority of mobile users use GSM technologies.

Evolving A Uniquely African Approach
The business and operating climate in the African telecommunication sector has radically shifted. Firstly, market liberalization has helped shape an environment which fosters competition. Regulatory bodies are being established, to oversee the introduction of services, resolve disputes, and support competition. A glance across Africa’s mobile landscape illustrates the benefits of competition. The only countries with less mobile than fixed telephone subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2003 were either those without mobile networks or without mobile competition. Mobile competition has benefited even the poorest countries. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia both have per capita incomes of around US$100, yet the Democratic Republic of Congo has a mobile penetration of around 2% – some 15 times greater than Ethiopia’s, which stood at 0.13% at the end of 2003.The difference? Whilst Ethiopia has only 1 GSM operator, the Democratic Republic of Congo has 3 GSM networks, in addition to non GSM cellular networks.

Pan Regional Giants
Competition alone is not the key. The emergence over the last 3-4 years of African based, pan-regional mobile operators, is another significant reason behind mobile’s growth. The spheres of mobile influence of these strategic investors now reach across the continent. It is these operators, such as Vodacom, Orascom Telecom and MTN who have been able to apply uniquely African approaches onto the markets on which they operate. They also provide competition – not just any competition, but their presence ensures that competition is of a suitable quality to help stimulate market growth. “Operators such as MTN or Vodacom have the knowledge of operating in different African markets which they can then duplicate onto other markets in the region,” explains Michael Minges, Head of ITU’s Market, Economics and Finance Unit and lead author of the 2004 African Telecommunications Indicators report. “But crucially they also possess a vital zeal to spread the benefits of mobile communications across the region, and with this enthusiasm they have helped created a mobile revolution in Africa.”

As Africa’s telecoms investment climate has shifted, in turn, potential investors in the region are becoming more willing to make concessions which they would not have done 10 years ago. Vendors, looking to grow in new markets as they face saturation elsewhere, are increasingly tailoring their approach to the region, developing special lower-cost solutions to suit the needs of the region.

Harnessing Approaches that Work
Mobile operators in Africa have been quick to see the benefits of prepaid services. In a region where per-capita incomes are low, and payment upfront in cash is generally the preferred means of payment, prepaid services are ideally suited. They reduce the risk of bad credit to operators while exposing a whole new consumer group to telecommunications services; those who would not normally have qualified for postpaid mobile services or fixed lines. A growing number of African networks operate only as prepaid, and four out of every five African subscribers – almost twice the global average – use prepaid services. Prepaid services have been further adapted to offer mobile ‘payphone’ services. It is tapping into these regional specific approaches, and accessing new sectors of the population who have not previously been exposed to telecommunications, which have helped to drive up mobile usage in recent years, and will continue to do so.

How Far do Mobile’s Benefits Really Extend?
Despite its suitability for the African market, how far has mobile really gone in terms of extending the benefits of telecommunications? Levels of mobile penetration vary considerably across the region, ranging from under 1% in Ethiopia to 74.7% in Réunion at the end of 2003, indicating that, for much of the region there is still huge scope for growth. Mobile technology has, however, gone further than any other communications technology in Africa in terms of bridging the digital divide. Mobile’s ease of payment means that services extend to segments of urban and rural populations who previously would not have been able to afford them, and where demand is high. Mobile infrastructure also extends way beyond that of fixed-line, into rural and ‘universal access’ markets, something to which wireless technology is innately more suited than the traditional fixed-line. Nevertheless, network coverage remains low with only an estimated 50% of Sub-Saharan Africa covered by a mobile signal, indicating that there is still a large untapped market, provided operators can be encouraged to extend network coverage.

Boosting Local Jobs
Mobile technology has also spawned a number of new employment possibilities. Prepaid card sellers or mobile resellers, such as Nigeria’s ‘umbrella people’ so called as they use umbrellas to provide shade whilst plying their wares – are now commonplace. Mobile reselling is a boom business – umbrella people, for example, have reportedly been able to exhaust 2-3 MTN prepaid cards, each valued at roughly USD11.60, per day.

Affordability of service is still a key issue – if services are unaffordable for potential new users, then this sector of the market cannot offer prospects for expansion. After a period of rapid mobile uptake, the mobile growth curve is set to continue. ITU forecasts mobile subscriber growth of 17% during 2004. To maintain the momentum of growth however, operators – as elsewhere in the world – will need to look to new areas of growth to attract new users.

Tapping into New Growth Streams Data
Applications such as WAP are beginning to surface. One of the most publicized examples is of Senegal’s Manoni, which launched a service to enable farmers to query databases on pricing information, utilizing WAP. The service is used by over 1 000 users.

Meanwhile, SMS (short message service) usage is showing signs of a fast uptake in Africa. While the majority of SMS traffic tends to be for mundane communications, SMS has also been harnessed for a number of innovative, region-specific applications. In Zambia, mobile operator Celtel has launched a mobile payment system whereby users can make payments using SMS, with a code identifying the payee.

Applications such as mobile banking have the potential to make a major impact in Africa, a region where cash payments are preferred and where people do not generally carry credit cards.

Migration to 3G?
A lack of fixed-line infrastructure as well as low PC penetration means that the potential for mobile Internet is considerable. Indeed 3G services have already been launched in a number of African countries, including Angola. Although there are no 3G networks in operation on the continent, network upgrades have enabled service launches. Recently Ericsson was awarded Africa’s first EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for Global Evolution) contract, to provide the technology to Ghana’s Scancom. Deploying EDGE will provide a migration path toward 3G, and enable Scancom to assess demand for enhanced data services. High speed or not, mobiles can still allow users to access the Internet “We are seeing users using regular GSM networks to gain access to the Internet, ” says Minges “It is certainly slow, but in areas where no alternative exists it is the only way to gain Internet access.” Given this, a logical technology to deploy would be GPRS (General Packet Radio Services), which could provide a higher speed access solution. Yet operators have still to embark on a large-scale rollout of the technology – by the end of 2003 GPRS had only been launched in three African markets. “Operators should be exploiting the potential of GPRS ” explains Minges “Given the obvious thirst for Internet access, GPRS could provide users with Internet access at speeds equivalent to dial up access as well as new revenue streams for operators.”

Universal Service Market
The Universal service market offers some surprisingly vibrant growth opportunities. Cautious of extending the reach of mobile services into rural areas, where service uptake may not be as rapid as in urban areas, operators have been slow in seizing the prospects these markets offer. “Operators should see these markets as a growth opportunity” says Minges. “Providing a service such as a community payphone can generate over 3 times the monthly revenue of a conventional user.” While services such as community payphones clearly do not provide a boost for handset sales, they do mean that levels of mobile traffic are kept high. Mobile initiatives in the universal services area include the Grameen Phone initiative. This initiative replicates the Grameen Telecom’s village phone programme running in Bangladesh, which currently has over 40 000 village phone operators. The Grameen initiative in Uganda operates in partnership with MTN Uganda and provides low cost mobile services into poor rural areas.

The Death of the Fixed-line?
Providing that operators maintain a focus on service affordability, as well as looking to new growth areas, the future for mobile looks very positive. But what of fixed-line growth, which has been almost static beside the burgeoning mobile market? Total numbers of fixed lines are forecast to reach 30 millions by the end of 2005, according to ITU. Although by this point the number of fixed lines will be dwarfed by mobile, fixed-line growth will nevertheless have been steady, increasing by around 6-10% each year. The key to fixed-line’s growth lies with wireless technologies, and it is only through these technologies that fixed-line can ‘fight back’. Offering fixed-line services over fixed wireless access (FWA) networks offers all the advantages of mobile – they are cheaper to install than conventional copper wire networks – but are also attractive in their ability to provide high data speeds. It is this ability to provide broadband which needs to be exploited, to leverage the one advantage fixed-line services has over mobile.

Fitting the Market’s Needs
Fixed-line services will also need to be adapted to meet the needs of the market, paying attention to areas which have helped mobile grow – in particular the ability to prepay for calls. The suitability of FWA networks means that they are already being deployed in certain countries in Africa. In Nigeria, for example, by mid 2003, new fixed wireless networks accounted for some 30% of all fixed lines. If the Nigerian experience can be duplicated across other countries, and fixed wireless technologies can be harnessed to revamp traditional fixed-line services, then there may still be hope for Africa’s fixed-line market.

Wireless Way Forward …
Fixed, Mobile or Internet, Africa’s ICT future is definitely a wireless one. In the absence of fixed-line networks, in addition to a lack of PCs, Mobile phones are likely to becoming increasingly used as means to access the internet, and in the immediate future it is mobile technologies such as GPRS combined with wireless technologies such as WiFi, which are likely to drive the mobile Internet market. With a number of the region’s mobile networks ready for GPRS, it is only a matter of time until operators keen to address stagnant levels of ARPU (Average Revenue per User) – begin to push GPRS as a means of accessing the Internet.

Fixed-line operators must also look to wireless options to diversify and extend their service range. As well as voice services, fixed wireless technology will also allow operators to offer highspeed broadband Internet access, and this could well prove to be the one antidote to declining fixed revenues.

Vested Interests in Africa’s Mobile Future
The stakeholders in Africa’s mobile industry will each have their own roles to play in shaping the future mobile market. Regulators and policy makers can act decisively to ensure that competition friendly policies are encouraged, such as keeping license fees to a minimum, and that any lack of transparencies in the business climate are addressed. Regulators should step in to make the prospect of rural expansion a more attractive one to operators, such as by including – and enforcing – higher rollout obligations for new market entrants, or by providing incentives such as lowering of asymmetric interconnect rates to entice existing players further into areas which previously had no network coverage. Operators themselves should be encouraged to share infrastructure where possible to keep their costs down and encourage competition.

Manufacturers must continue finding methods to keep infrastructure costs as low as possible, as well as tailoring their approach to address the needs of the region – such as looking at tailoring solutions to low ARPU users. Vendor financing agreements, with the backing of governments and investment bodies will also encourage manufacturers to provide network enhancement and expansion.

With around 51m mobile subscribers in a market of 800m, Africa offers tremendous growth potential, and by continuing to deploy and adapt an approach which fits the needs of the market, then the mobile growth curve looks set to continue.

by ITU Africa

Related posts:

1. Mobile Phone Technologies In Africa
2. Mobile Data: Bridging The Internet Divide In Africa
3. Mobile Web usage in Africa grows nearly 170%