Aviat Networks, an expert in microwave networking solutions, has announced an agreement with MTN Nigeria to expand managed services.
Aviat Networks will manage the flow of material into Aviat-controlled facilities for MTN Nigeria. The material will be managed, organized and kitted in support of specific customer implementations that have been jointly planned between MTN Nigeria and Aviat Networks.
“This is an opportunity to work more closely with our partner on planning and deploying Aviat equipment into the MTN Nigeria network,” said Yahaya Ibrahim, Senior Manager Core and Transmission Implementation, NID-Network Group, MTN Nigeria. “This new agreement demonstrates our confidence in Aviat’s capabilities to efficiently manage our inventory. The agreement reduces our overall costs and pain points and improves visibility to better plan future inventory requirements.”
The agreement will hardenthe partnership beteen the two. Aviat Networks currently provides a broad set of value-added services including network design and planning, inventory and spares management and product support across a broad spectrum of Aviat supplied products. Aviat Networks will be leveraging its proven approach to managing the receipt and shipment of products within the Nigerian sector.
“This agreement with MTN Nigeria lays the foundation to offer additional managed telecom services across our overall customer base,” says Heinz Stumpe, Aviat Networks Chief Sales Officer and Senior Vice President. “It opens a new source of business for us upon which we intend to build.”
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) wants to set a new trend in the country; the body wants to launch a high-level inquiry into the state of competition in the ICT sector.
The regulator says that the growth of the sector is constantly changing as well as growing and felt the necessity of opting up a separate body which will take care of the implications for the local and international industries.
One area in which these changes are pronounced is in the competitiveness of the electronic communications, broadcasting and postal sectors and the assumption that greater competition will lead to reduction in the cost to communicate.
Another issue is what impact any consolidation of the market will have on the state of competition, the cost to communicate and bridging the digital divide. The question of the assignment of spectrum for broadband will also have an
effect on the state of competition in the ICT sector.
“It is against this background that the Authority is embarking on a wide ranging inquiry to develop a full appreciation of the implication of these unfolding changes and developments on the regulation of competition in the ICT sector,” it
states.
Telecel Zimbabwe’s new promotion dubbed Go Brazil, aims to give winners prizes worth over $200 000, plus four all-expenses paid trip for two to watch the the soccer World Cup in Brazil.
According to the firm in a statement, four lucky subscribers will each receive two tickets for the World Cup, with Telecel paying the cost of the air fares, visas and bed and breakfast accommodation in a three star hotel in Rio de Janeiro, as well as some pocket money.
Other prizes include cash prizes of up to $10 000, World Cup jerseys and Samsung handsets.
There are two ways of participating in the promotion, which runs until 8 August. The first, which is only open to pre-paid subscribers, is by sending a free text message with the letter “R” to 33330.
After that points are awarded every time the subscriber recharges the phone with airtime. The more airtime loaded for calls, the more points earned. The more points earned the greater the chances of winning the World Cup prize.
A newly activated Telecel prepaid line earns 20 points, as does a reactivated line. A recharge of a dollar earns 10 points, while a recharge of two dollars earns 30 points. Loading five dollars airtime earns 100 points, while $10 earns 250 points and $20 earns 600 points.
The second way of participating in the promotion, which is open to both pre-paid and post-paid subscribers, is to send a blank text message to 33566. Every time subscribers do this, they will receive three questions related to football for them to answer at a cost of 25 cents.
A correct answer earns the subscriber 10 points. Five points are awarded if the answer is incorrect.
Those who accumulate points by answering questions by SMS have the opportunity to win cash prizes in weekly and monthly draws. There will be six prizes of $500 every week of the promotion and a monthly prize of $10 000. A subscriber can only win one weekly and one monthly prize.
Two of the World Cup packages will be won by subscribers who have earned points through recharging their phone with airtime. The other two will be won by subscribers who have earned their points through answering questions.
All prize winners will be selected through a draw, with the number of points accumulated determining the number of entries a subscriber has in the draw.
In addition to the World Cup draws at the end of the promotion there will be draws for World Cup jerseys and two Samsung handsets.
Those earning points when they recharge their airtime can opt to redeem points at threshold levels of 50 points, 100 points, 200 points and 500 points for airtime, data or SMSs, although by doing so they will reduce the number of points they have and so reduce the number of entries they have in the draws for the World Cup prize.
Peppermint, open source project started a few years ago, aims at offering a lightweight; web focused operating system that emphasizes speed and ease of use built using the common Ubuntu code base.
Peppermint was put together using a lot of the sensibilities of more user friendly distributions such as Linux Mint while retaining the low resource use typical of lighter distributions. Peppermint is currently on its fourth major version, with a fifth due out between May and June this year.
Peppermint are much faster and responsive than windows run machine and people prefer more. According to Shane Microsoft has the potential to work well in Africa, however relative inflexibility regarding licensing limits in areas with no or unstable currencies or areas with severely limited economic resources are an issue.
With Microsoft dropping support for Windows XP, a lot of the hardware that’s available in Africa is now only suited for running lightweight Linux distributions as they won’t handle the newer versions of Windows.
Marc Stephan Nkouly, the manager of a successful Cameroon cyber café says using Open source technologies to help build a worldwide community of contributors to and users of tools that are providing new educational opportunities, resources, and jobs.
“I will do my best to create a center where we can train young people in Linux and web development, because those are the kinds of skills and jobs that can make these youth have decent employment locally and can also contribute to improve local business,” he said.
Shane Remington: “Since our very first offering, Peppermint One, we’ve been averaging about 8 million downloads each version and we estimate that we have a community comprised of over 3 million users in 140 countries and territories worldwide.”
Given the open licensing and free use, lightweight Linux distributions are a natural fit for any circumstance involving limited economic means or restricted hardware availability.
Peppermint has a great potential of making it big, according to Remington, it is very light, stable, and a great starting point for those who want to get started with Linux and not feel freaked out.
“The other major way is affordability as Peppermint will always have a free, community supported version, to explore with, learn and build upon,” he said.
According to Weaver, Peppermint’s strongest point is simply being a fast and sleek desktop operating system that stays out of your way. It also makes it easier for users to create a modern looking desktop experience than many other lightweight Linux distributions, as our default configuration includes things like compositing.
Peppermint is located in Hendersonville, North Carolina and run by Shane Remington and Kendall Weaver along with other supporting people in financing, community supporters and marketers.
iHub has said it will shut down its 24 node super computer and shift into the cloud after several months working on the project.
The shut down of the dear project might be shocking but no need to worry as the organization is shifting to the cloud.
iHub’s Community Lead Jimmi Gitonga wrote, “We officially announce the end of the iHub Cluster initiative. It will now be under the iHub Community Infrastructure which includes our other hardware and software systems. We will use the Super Computer hardware for research and training into CPU and GPU hybrid systems and software. This will revolve around parallel programming with areas like OpenCL and HSA being investigated.”
iHub, instead of wasting time on the ambitious supercomputer which requires expensive hardware costs and personell says the a virtual bigger server hosted as a service and paid by use and resources required is the best alternative for the growing tech community and for its partners. And after shifting to the cloud, no one will worry about hardware resources. Shift to the cloud also allows for automation, scalability, agility and on-demand service delivery. So the iHub will offer the cloud as a service to anyone that is interested.
Gitonga adds that with 3 servers from iHub’s corporate partners Intel and Microsoft Kenya, and the help of Kenyan cloud provider Kili.io,Tthe iHub Cloud will be up and running in a matter of weeks.
“The iHub Cloud is only accessible to people who are sitting at the iHub. It is free for an initial period of 6 months. It is built to be a development environment which includes billing and resource management info so that a developer can know what it will cost when the system goes live in production. The iHub has been granted the ability to give a free 6 month period to any iHub member who wants to deploy in a production environment. This means that your system will be accessible across the Internet,” ” Gitonga added.
Started at the end of 2011, iHub felt the need for hardware to help in research and training, offer power-computing services for local content and host parallel and heavy aplications such as for weather prediction, draught prediction and real-time information dispatch. iHub then received an initial funding from Google Africa, then Intel gave them an Intel MultiFlex® Server.
Gitonga, Google Kenya’s Bob Aman and the late Idd Salim began building the first 4 nodes of the then 24 node cluster.
Vandalism has of the mobile base stations been quite rampant in Nigeria making the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), their regulator, express its concern with the problem and is looking into making the situation better.
This is not the first time this issue has been raised by the mobile networks, who have been complaining about being fined so many times due to poor quality services yet, they claim, that the problem has been brought about by the problems of the lack of security in their base stations which have been stolen and damaged.
The NCC’s Chairman, Engineer Peter Igoh has called on the state governors to pass legislation that would classify and protect telecommunication equipment as critical infrastructure.
However, for now there are claims that the police treat base station damage, which is mostly to get at the diesel used to power them, as a secondary crime.
“Sometimes, ignorance plays a part as many may not appreciate the need for massive infrastructure for telecom service,” said the Chairman.
State organizations will now be expected to advertise digitally following a drafted amendment requiring state organizations to advertise on online platforms in a bid to have more reach and save a tangible amount of money too.
The government aims to cut down the advertising budget by more than 50 per cent this year and 70 per cent next year. The move to digital advertising by the organization will save Ksh5 billion each year and still develop the use of ICT for economic growth while at it.
“We in the national government have taken that decision and its going to cascade down to the county governments. We need to move from analogue way of doing business to digital,” said Ministry of ICT cabinet secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i .
10 million Kenyans have access to the internet which is higher than the combined national circulation of the three leading local newspapers which has an audience of less than two million.
Google has encrypted all searches made by people in china to avoid official scrutiny of where they go online and in a bid to take privacy a notch higher in the country.
The search engine will now encrypt all the text involved in searches “by default” around the world. The move is also a reaction to continuing revelations about the extent of surveillance of web browsing habits by the National Security Agency (NSA).
US and UK have had the option to encrypt their searches since 2010 and Google is now upgrading search processes around the world. In China, the web browsing and social media habits of citizens are monitored by a very sophisticated system that attempts to stop people finding out about or sharing information on sensitive subjects.
Home grown search engine Baidu is most used in the country since it does not comply with official censorship requests. Google will now provide more protection on users’ personal data to avoid getting in trouble with governments whose concern on sensitive information is high.
“The revelations this past summer underscored our need to strengthen our networks.” Said Google spokeswoman Nikki Christoff in a statement.
Made popular by South Africa’s Triggerfish, Nigeria’s Maliyo and Kuluya Games, Leti Games,Kenya’s Ma3Racer, University of Games, and Uganda’s Matatu , gaming is picking up in the region.
Muva Studios is a new gaming studio that has launched to give game enthusiasts cool and entertaining mobile games that are fun to play.
Evans Ndegwa CEO Muva Studios told TechMoran that Muva Studios is managed by gaming development professionals with a common purpose of providing the best gaming experience to the players. This is through providing games that are intricately designed, released reliably, developed with high emphasis to quality and constantly updated to keep all the players well entertained.
“We were first gamers…then developers and designers and we believe we can deliver best quality and experience in this area,” Ndegwa told TechMoran. “We use in-app adverts and purchases. Few games are paid for. We are developing for Nokia Asha and working on android versions. In future we want to use gaming as a marketing tool for corporates, and open our platform for them to work with us.”
Ndegwa says gaming is different from developing enterprise softwares as it is global and much freer to steer as a team. He adds that white labelling takes long time to close business and the potential in games is equally high that’s why the firm is into games more than enterprise software development.
Founded late last year with over nine games, Muva Studios is the latest entrant in the African gaming scene and says it has a group of game developers who share a common goal of creating and sharing simple, addictive and high quality games. The firm develops for Android, Asha iOS and Social and Desktop Games.
With the increasing uptake of internet in Africa, a firm should ignore having an online presence at its own peril and though advertising is costly, and SME’s have low marketing budgets, they still have to do it.
Yalwa, a free online business directory with business pages for SME’s has launched in Africa to help small business owners list their firms for free and as well link back to their websites, if they have one.
The firm announced, “We are happy to announce our new Yalwa countries Cameroon, DR Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Morocco, Tanzania, UgandaYalwa is focusing on the African continent in its expansion and looks forward to new users and challenges. We are now active in 50 countries worldwide!
Launched in 2007 in Germany by Yalwa, a web applications firm, the directory is now available in over 50 countries, the firm gives businesses in various categories to list their products or services for users across the world. The SME’s use the pages to reach their customers and also target all potential ones. The firm says the Yalwa Business Directory help SME’s reach out to the community for free and as well send word out about their products and services.
According to Klaus Gapp, CEO and founder Yalwa in an earlier statement, “In this volatile economy, small businesses are the ones struggling the most to keep their business alive during the global recession. Marketing budgets are tight. We at Yalwa believe that free local marketing can make a real difference to small business owners.”
Nomanini has appointed Kuda Mushambi, ex-Manager of Publisher Partnerships at Google, UK as its Chief Commercial Officer in a move that is expected to see him push the firm’s expansion within Africa and in other emerging markets further abroad.
The business development specialist was responsible for the sale and delivery of Google’s advertising platforms to enterprise online publishers in the UK and Nordics and also oversaw the sale, implementation and rollout of technology platforms which made the firm revenue-positive.
Mushambi is expected to build similar partnerships in the informal market, enabling people to build their businesses on Nomanini’s payments platform.
“I am ecstatic to join the Nomanini team at a critical time in the organisation, where the need for payment solutions in the informal market is incredibly large and practically untapped. The applicability of Nomanini’s technology across different industry verticals, in virtually every geography worldwide and towards an immense number of people make this a transformational company that I’m proud to join,” said Mr. Mushambi in a statement.
Before he joined Google, Mushambi was Senior Manager (Technical) of Mobile Accounts at Microsoft, where he worked with mobile partners to drive revenue growth by enabling mobile partners to build devices and manufacturers to build mobile devices to market with global mobile operators.
Combined with this deep technical knowledge is his ability to formulate and deliver upon solid business strategies, stemming from his background in business and an MBA from the London School of Business. Mr. Mushambi received his BS in Engineering and Applied Science from California Institute of Technology and his MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington.
In a statement, Vahid Monadjem, Nomanini CEO said,“Kuda is a great fit for Nomanini. His global business development experience, underpinned with his solid technical background are just what Nomanini needs in this exciting time in our journey. As important as his capability, is that he suits our team culture well and shares our values. I am looking forward to working with him.”
eVA Fund’s investment director and member of Nomanini’s Board of Advisors Brian Hirman, said Noamini’s next step is to grow the adoption of it’s high-end technology across Africa and the fund is confident that Kuda can achieve that.
Kenya and South African Students have taken the first four positions in the global finals of IBM’s Master the Mainframe competition.
The competition, which is part of company’s System z Academic Initiative, allows students around the world take charge of world-class zEnterprise computing platforms and showcase their talents, while learning sought-after enterprise computing skills.
For the first time, it was open to students from Kenyan universities, attracting over 250 entries.
“We are impressed by the unprecedented amount of interest in this competition from students in both Kenya and South Africa, which speaks to the growing innovative culture in the continent. These students will now have the opportunity to test their skills on the global stage and compete with their peers as well as identify potential employment opportunities on a global stage,” says Andy Hoiles, IBM Server Solutions sales division.
Two Kenyans, Raphael Kiminya Laibuni from Strathmore University, and Margaret Adhiambo Ondeng from Kenyatta University, emerged overall winners of the Kenyan competition and will join 43 other top students in the global finals of the competition.
In South Africa, Johannes Siecker from FNB Hogan Academy and Rijnard van Tonder from Stellenboch University will represent the country at the global World Cup in New York City on 7 April 2014.
From 10th March, the students started to work tenuously, receiving training from qualified zEnterprise instructors. Competitors will learn how to sharpen their enterprise computing skills, learn about advanced development tools, and find out how the platform supports cloud, big data & analytics, mobile and security initiatives.
The competitor will embark on building a business application on the mainframe. Competitors will then travel to New York City to showcase their application to a panel of judges from across the IT industry in New York City on 7 April.
Students who enter the competition also have the opportunity to identify job opportunities supporting mainframe environments. To help in this process, IBM has created Systemzjobs.com. The job board is a resource to link IBM System z clients and partners with students and professionals seeking System z job opportunities and regularly features more than 1 000 mainframe-related jobs.
The Aviat Networks and Ubuntu Technologies and have combined revenue of more than R6-billion to create a new class of telecommunications company that combines both local and international expertise.
The venture came about when NASDAQ-listed Aviat Networks set out to find a BEE partner that would enable it to expand its reach into the South African market.
Ubuntu brings knowledge of local needs from its experience in providing wireless, networking, data centre and client services and solutions primarily to the public sector.
Aviat has a strong track record in the telecommunications sector and, in a survey conducted by California-based Infonetics Research, was recognized as the top microwave specialist by network providers around the world.
“Aviat-Ubuntu intends to be a force to be reckoned with in the telecommunications sector,” says Ubuntu CEO, Wandile Bereng. “By joining forces, our two companies will be able to compete aggressively in the telecommunication sector, and will be able to expand our client base significantly.”
The new company will be headed up by CEO Allen Tshabangu, who has over 20 years’ of business experience, working for companies such as the Standard Bank Group, M-NET and Norwich Investments.
He has also been involved in some notable mergers and acquisitions’, including the acquisitions of Sandton City, the V&A Waterfront and Canal Walk, is a non-executive director of Escalator Capital, and a director and board member of Ubuntu Technologies.
“Aviat-Ubuntu aims to support the development of the country’s economic potential by leveraging off the expertise of the two partners,” says Tshabangu. “The new company is uniquely positioned to provide end-to-end solutions, and also to compete for market share based on improved efficiencies that will accrue from economies of scale.”
Poynting is now in a position to diversify the distribution of their digital TV products through third party service providers into the untapped African consumer market; an ability that was made possible by the company acquiring Aucom.
Poynting acquired Aucom (African Union Communications) for R49.5million ($4,586,868) by way of the issue of 66-million Poynting shares with effect from 1 July 2013.
“This is Poynting’s first major deal since listing on the JSE, and we anticipate that it will more than double the company’s turnover. Poynting’s board has been united from the outset regarding this undertaking with Aucom, given that our companies and people share the same values and vision,” said Coen Bester, chairman of Poynting’s board of directors.
Aucom is a Pretoria-based provider of professional products, system integration and implementation, and commissioning services to the broadcast and telecommunications markets in South Africa and beyond.
The collaboration will enable Aucom, with its strong African network, to leverage Poynting’s product offering and technical expertise to grow market share.
Villiers Joubert, Aucom founder and MD, says: “The key to this merger is that it will enable considerable expansion as a group. There will be more muscle that will give rise to previously unexplored opportunities and enable us to compete against the big industry players.”
Andre Fourie, CEO of Poynting, expects that the deal will facilitate the raising of additional capital for the development of specific projects to meet the needs of the growing African digital television market.
BBM is spreading its wings unapologetically; it has now made its way to the MTN Steppa, which is a recently introduced entry-level smartphone. The announcement was made by MTN South Africa.
To access the app, users will visit Google Play store using their Steppa smartphone, search for BBM and download it. Whichever data charges one chooses to apply, it will not use a single cent of your money as the download is absolutely free.
“For our existing BBM users, this means that they can find even more people they want to talk to on BBM. It is as easy as checking out the Find Friends feature to see who has joined BBM that they might know,” says Mike Fairon, head of Product at MTN.
The MTN Steppa is available in selected retail stores for R499($46.243) on the MTN prepaid price plans. It is the most affordable smartphone in South Africa, breaking the affordability barrier of smartphones to deliver internet access and a high performance mobile phone handset to South Africans at an affordable price.
A new telemedicine facility could be the answer to the healthcare situation in Uganda’s rural area. This is a platform which allows the local health care workers to consult online with doctors in Kampala.
On a normal day, dozens of patients will wait stoically to be attended to, some of which are straight forward others require argent medical attention.
Rosemary Napeyok, head of the facility, in Nadunget Health Center in Karamoja, northeastern Uganda said: “The major conditions we treat here are malaria, respiratory tract infections and gastrointestinal infections. But not all cases are so simple, and like all health centers in Karamoja, Nadunget has no doctor. Advanced stages of AIDS, severe malaria and more obscure diseases often baffle the nurses. Standard procedure is to send such patients to the referral hospital in the town of Moroto, 10 kilometers away.”
Napeyou added that, the roads are terrible, transport is often lacking and even the referral hospital has only two doctors; not forgetting that mobile phone network is also an issue.
The new telemedicine satellite Internet connection will make things a bit bearable in the area. A simple call over Skype could save a life or treat a patient.
Godfrey Bampiiga from UNICEF, responsible for the pilot the concept of telemedicine, explained that the computers the health center uses run on solar power, important in a region almost completely off the electric grid.
He added that what the nurses need to do is to turn it to face where the patient is, and the doctor will see exactly how the patient is doing.
Smile Communications has launched its 4G/LTE network on 800 MHz spectrum in Lagos, Nigeria after launching it in Ibadan, a year earlier.
The February 2014, commercial launch in Lagos, makes it the first to launch 4G/ LTE technology in West Africa, promising improved mobile broadband experience using an Ericsson LTE radio network.
According to Tom Allen, Smile Group Chief Operating Officer: “At Smile Communications, we seek to deliver affordable, high-quality and easy-to-use broadband internet access and communications services to our customers and in Nigeria, Ericsson is helping us do this. With successful commercial operations since 2013, we are very excited to formally announce today the commencement of our services and the beginning of a cross-country roll-out. We are starting in Lagos and will lay our footprints in other major cities across the country shortly.
Smile Communications and Ericsson have a 3-year network deployment agreement to develop over 1,100 LTE sites across the country. Under the terms of this agreement, Ericsson is responsible for the project management, system integration, interoperability testing, network design and implementation.
“With mobile data traffic estimated to grow 17 times by 2019 and Nigeria currently holding the highest number of mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa, superior network performance is imperative,” said Magnus Mchunguzi, Vice President, Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa. ” As a global HSPA and LTE leader, we are committed to partnering with Smile Communications in meeting this growing demand for enriched broadband experience.”
With over 50 percent of the world’s LTE smartphone traffic, Ericsson is the market leader in LTE and is present in all high-traffic LTE markets including the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, Ericsson has been selected by the top 10 LTE operators, as ranked by LTE subscriptions worldwide.
Mobile networks in Ghana are repeating the SIM card registration exercise yet again, this is an order given to them by the government of Ghana as they have been accused of engaging in fraudulent activities around the scheme.
The government’s reason behind this is that it has been noted that use of fake identity cards had become been rampant and has been noted three years after the completion of the exercise.
The Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Boamah who disclosed the order, explained the re-registration must be done only if the National Identification Authority completed the issuance of the National ID Cards.
He told the six telecom operators namely, MTN, Vodafone, TiGo, Airtel, Glo Mobile and Expresso, that they must “candidly” re-run the SIM card registration exercise to help enhance security in the country.
“We definitely need to provide confidence and security in the use of electronic communications in Ghana. You would recall the police report of 2 340000 prank calls made to the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana National Fire Service in 2013. This is surely not the right use of the opportunities we are blessed with,” he said.
Parliament in 2012 adopted the Subscriber Identity Module Registration Regulations, 2011 (L.I. 2006) to give backing to SIM card registration in the country.
Existing subscribers who had either not registered their SIM cards or whose earlier registrations were invalid are required to re-register, failure to which their SIM cards will be de-activated.
Office 365 personal will be out in the market by the end of May this year. This software is designed for an individual and allows for one PC or Mac and one tablet to be connected to the service.
The new software will cost you a subscription of about $69.99 a year or $6.99 a month (ERP)1. In addition to that the Office 365 Home Premium will still be in the market for house hold subscription, but th name will be changed to Office 365 Home, but you will be able to notice the difference when the Office 365 Personal becomes available.
Whichever Office 365 subscription you choose, you’ll get all of the subscription benefits including 60 minutes of Skype calling per month, 20 GB of additional OneDrive storage and always be up to date with the most recent version of Office.
Microsoft is committed to delivering a great Office experience to all of our customers and believe that giving you a choice about the Office 365 subscription that fits your unique needs is one way we can do that. We’ll have more details to share closer to availability.
Kenya’s Safaricom is reportedly working on NFC-enabled SIM cards which will see Kenyans use their phones to pay for just anything, from public transport, restaurants, shopping at supermarket tills, drug storers, cinema’s, concerts, fuel service stations and just about everything.
Still undergoing the tendering process, the NFC SIM cards ware expected to be rolled out to its subscribers for mobile contactless payments and transactions making Safaricom the first mobile operator in the region to mass deploy SIM-based NFC for contactless transactions.
For a successful deployment, Safaricom is expected to build an NFC infrastructure countrywide, just like it did with its mobile money agents so as its subscribers can pay for services and buy goods anywhere in the country. This service will be a futuristic step ahead of its Lipa na M-PESA service whose adoption was growing steadily, countrywide. Safaricom will have to convince service providers to come onboard to accept mobile phone NFC swipes than the normal Lipa na M-PESA.
With a great strategy, Safaricom might sign up banks, Matatu saccos and bus transport companies, retailers like Uchumi among others. TechMoran is yet to establish the technical partners and we cannot tell the specifics of the project which is still at a tendering process but just like Safaricom did with Kopo Kopo on Lipa na M-PESA, it will assign a partner like Gemalto to build a secure and scalable solution to so as retailers can run their own systems on the tiny SIM card so as they can load and update their own applications wherever they are. Retailers data on the SIM card can be buyers personal data and transactional history.
Just like M-PESA, the NFC wallet on Safaricom subscribers SIM cards will be as simple as it is to activate M-PESA and get going, ready to buy goods or pay for a cab or bus or air ticket. The NFC wallet on the SIM card can be take up as much data to include and payment apps for shopping, transportation, bus or air tickeing, hotel booking, school fees payments, club memberships and loyalty programs.
Image: www.aunclicdelastic.com
We do not have much details about the Safaricom NFC SIM card wallet and how it will work, technically but we presume it will meet EMVCo, MasterCard and Visa requirements. A friend says most such SIM cards come with a 1.3 MB memory or above and can be found in the ordinary 2FF or micro-SIM to and nano-SIM types and run on Java and apart from NFC payment services, they support ticketing applications and discount loyalty programs.
Safaricom is not being insane.
Various mobile operators have launched these NFC wallets on their SIM cards before, as they make more sense than NFC tags.
As early as 2011, Korean mobile network operator SK Telecom announced an NFC-enabled USIM card that turns basic mobile phones into NFC devices as long as the user replaces the dumb SIM card with the new NFC USIMs. Complete with emulation and read/write functions and peer-to-peer support, the NFC USIM’ cards had voice capabilities plus a 13.56MHz near field communication antenna and an NFC controller. The firm also released the API for developers to create diverse related services.
With such a SIM card, a phone can get product information in stores, receive mobile ads, discounts and coupons, power peer to peer real-time money transfers and also work as electronic business cards, check-in to hotels, unlock office doors and into their computers.
Still in 2011, China Mobile and China Unicom, which account for nearly 800 million connections throughout China, were among the GSMA’s 45 leading mobile operators embracing SIM-based Near Field Communications (NFC) solutions and services. GSMA said that those NFC handset and SIMs would enable the development and global deployment of secure, interoperable and ubiquitous SIM-based mobile NFC services.
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India’s Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Libya’s Mobily, Orange, Verizon, VimpelCom and Vodafone Group were also among the SIM-based NFC adopters.
But you can say most of these operators are in the first world and are not thinking mobile money.
However, a report by ABI Research indicates that 85 per cent of all new point of sale terminals shipped in 2016 will be NFC-enabled. Another forecast by Strategy Analytics indicates that nearly 1.5 billion SIM-based NFC handsets will have been sold worldwide between 2010 and 2016, supporting transactions of more than $50 billion globally over the same period.
There are more arguments on why (smart)phones are a perfect carrier for NFC technologies. They can be used to read NFC tags on other objects, like discount codes you have to scan to redeem, or the target, holding your credit card information until sent the proper signal by a point-of-sale system in your favorite store. The small space in which NFC operates makes the technology ideal for interactions with people and personal technology. It’s also means that scans cannot be done without the user’s knowledge, so long as the device stays by them.
And we are not just talking about Google Offers and Google Wallet, just close by in Dubai, Etisalat and Du launched special NFC-enabled SIM cards for public transport payments though a range of smartphones years ago.
Closer home, iKaaz, a Sqaure-like startup is piloting its app, NFC tags and card readers in Nigeria to power cashless NFC payments, but being a tag and a card reader, we have little hope the Indian firm will successfully mass deploy the product and be in the Nigerian market for a longer time.
Safaricom’s killer NFC SIM cards, if they come, might cost a fortune but will be a plus better than Lipa na M-PESA as there will be no waiting on queues due to M-PESA delays or in case of cash where one has to wait for change, no worries of fake currency by everyone and no more cash.
After launching in Somalia sometime last year, and in Ghana early January, online money remittance service WorldRemit, today closed a $40 million investment round from Accel Partners, it’s first ever and largest Series A raised in Europe.
The 2009 founded firm, has a partnership with Safaricom’s M-PESA, international banks, mobile operator hubs among others and enables over 1.3 million remittance transactions annually. It’s first ever round will help the firm with slightly over 50 employees to expand rapidly in 2014, employe more staff to 200 employees by the end of the year and launch into new markets and develop additional products and services.
“We expect the online money transfer sector to account for approximately 30% of the remittance market in the next few years and that WorldRemit will be at the forefront of this change. We offer the most extensive range of pay-out options unmatched by any money transfer firm, including payments to mobile wallets and international airtime top up, which enable recipients to receive their money even where there is limited or no banking infrastructure.” said Ismail Ahmed, Founder & CEO at World Remit in a statement. “Accel Partners with their global network and extensive expertise in the payments industry is the perfect fit for WorldRemit. We are excited to continue our rapid growth trajectory with their support.”
According to The World Bank, $519 billion of remittance payments were made in 20121, mostly via traditional players such as Western Union and MoneyGram, as well as a plethora of smaller and informal operators. The majority of these payments are still conducted via a network of physical locations, resulting in an inefficient and expensive user experience. These traditional operators also create compliance risks associated with acceptance of cash at corner shops that leaves no audit trail.
Accessible via mobile phones and tablets, and with ability to make payments by debit or credit card, or via bank transfer, WorldRemit’s online platform enables migrants and expats to send quick, convenient and low cost remittance payments to families and friends abroad. The platform’s customers can send funds from 35 countries to families and friends in over 100 destinations who can receive funds via bank deposit, direct transfer to mobile wallets, cash pickup or delivery, as well as airtime top-up for their mobile phones. This is the disruption that Accel Partners wants.
Harry Nelis, Accel Partners said: “WorldRemit is moving remittance online, disrupting a traditionally offline business and democratizing payments. We are excited to be partnering with a team with the deep industry expertise that has enabled them to build the robust technology and strong compliance needed for a secure, trusted and world-class remittance business.”
Apart from being expanded to Ghanaians in mainland Europe, members of the Diaspora living in the UK, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain can use the service to transfer funds from the comfort of their own home or office 24/7 for much lower fees.
Ghana was chosen because it is one of the largest recipients of international remittances in Africa according to a Bank of Ghana report which saw remittances through formal channels hit $1.79 billion in 2009 and accounting for 11% of GDP.
Business Intelligence is no kid’s play, as majority of firms need to transform raw data into meaningful and useful information to power their decision making.
A new firm dubbed for Decision Inc has launched in Johannesburg South Africa to do just that, help firm’s understand data and use it to make informed choices or decisions. The firm is a result of a newly-formed merger between three leaders in the Business Intelligence (BI) space: ASYST Intelligence, BusinessIntelligent and the Microsoft division of DigiQuill (a Cyest company) and will be headed by CEO Nick Bell, who founded BusinessIntelligent in 2008.
In a statement Bell, says there was a concerted effort in 2013 to establish a sustainable, efficient and well-organised entity to build on BusinessIntelligent’s recognised value to the market.
“Leadership at BusinessIntelligent embarked on a journey to identify similar-minded companies that could provide clients with a technology and business experienced partner to assist in improving decision making processes and requirements.”
To start the firm, Cyest Corporation had to sell its division, DigiQuill Productivity, a Microsoft Partner, to Decision Inc and as well BusinessIntelligent was sold to Decision Inc making the two equal partners in the new venture. ASYST Intelligence then joined them as third partner also on equal terms.
“The merger means that the company has 70 highly skilled staff and over 200 clients, making it one of the few companies in South Africa that can offer assistance to any business, irrespective of the level of their requirements. Not only do we have a pool of skilled business and process analysts, but we have experienced technical consultants competent in building and supporting market-leading BI platforms and tools,” explains Bell.
Decision Inc. directors.
According to Bell, the service-delivery model is represented by four key pillars: Decision Architecture; Data Engineering; Insight Generation and Presentation; as well as Enablement & Support.
The leaders believe Decision Inc. demonstrates a radical shift in the application of BI within the African market.
“In addition to our unique understanding of decision-making processes and related solutions,” says Bell, “our value proposition is based on the provision of both technical skills and relevant business knowledge across the BI value chain. This will help clients to realise maximum value from their investment in decision support technology and enable them to make better decisions, faster.”
He says Decision Inc.’s vision is to add real value to clients by providing business and process knowledge, and then leveraging the power of information through robust data and best-of-breed platform technologies.
Decision Inc. represents global software vendors QlikView, SAP, Microsoft, Roambi, MicroStrategy and IsoMetrix.
“Our unique combination of business and technical competence will help business leaders make better and smarter decisions, gaining critical insight from their data,” he adds. “Clients are no longer focused on reporting for the sake of reporting: they see and understand the competitive advantage of being able to make better business decisions faster. They need actionable intelligence provided to them efficiently and through a platform that enables them to answer important questions about their business.”
The over $2 million worth Nigerian-based, Spark incubated African gaming company Kuluya Games has launched an SMS payment platform for some of its games, in a move that will see its users buy games and items that come with the games and also easily allow the developers to earn from their games.
According to the Spark’s Jessica Hope to TechMoran, “Users get to buy items and games coming within our games using SMS. Once the user decides to buy an item, the game sends an SMS from the user’s phone. The SMS can cost between 20 Naira to 100 Naira depending on the item.”
The in-app payment platform will be launched across Africa gradually.
“At the moment we are launching this in Nigeria for now. Talks are ongoing to get other mobile VAS aggregators to partner with across Africa,” Hope told TechMoran.
The firm says payment by SMS at the moment is still the most convenient way to accept payment on mobile phones in Africa and can help mobile developers monetize their applications. Kuluya has also partnered with Mtech to launch a new game dubbed KEKE and it’s available on Windows Phone and Android stores. The firm is now doing a pilot run for the game.
Last year, the online African gaming company raised a seed stage investment valuing the company at $2 Million. The firm said the funds were to be used to expand its commercial activities. KULUYA allows players to play, make bets, and make money through competitive cash games.
FIRSTEL Zimbabwe, a cellular service provider for NetOne, Zimbabwe’s first and leading GSM network operator has been sued for allegedly failing to pay over $8 million it had collected from NetOne’s subscribers.
FIRSTEL‘s core business is to sign up new NetOne subscribers and offer a range cellular terminal equipment for telcos. According to their agreement, Firstel was to sign up new contract subscribers for NetOne then bill them and receive payments on behalf of NetOne.
Now, NetOne says between January and March 2009, Firstel failed to settle its bills collected from selling contracts to NetOne subscribers as agreed in contract amounting to $8 million. The reports allege that Firstel Cellular failed to remit the amount due to the country’s intoduction of multi-currency, and many firms shifted from the local currency to the United States dollars.
NetOne argues that the contract line subscribers were to pay Firstel, which would then subtract its commission then remit the rest to NetOne. When Firstel failed to remit the dues as agreed in the contract, NetOne obtained a high court order against Firstel. Firstel was asked to pay NetOne even if it the clients had defaulted. Firstel went to the Supreme Court and appealed saying it was against public policy for it to pay when it had not collected any payments.
In its appeal at the Supreme Court, Firstel argues that it was a condition precedent for the liability of the appellant to arise for payments to be made by the customers first and because it was to be paid by discounts and commissions, it cannot be held liable as it has not earned any commission for it was not paid by the would-be customers.
However, NetOne remains adamant.
It argues, Firstel made it incur some debts and its promises of recovery made it believe Firstel will pay its dues coupled with Firstel’s acknowledged existence of customers. Net-One also added that the Supreme Court should steer clear of the High Court appeal as it was sound and proper.
Bharti Airtel has partnered with Chad’s Ministry of Secondary Education in a bid to train 6,000 youth in the country. The training will be focused on nurturing young talent to improve their ICT skills.
The training, organized by the Airtel Centum Training Centre, will comprise several sessions, each consisting of theoretical and practical training on ICT.
“Our aim as Airtel Africa in this project is to provide sustainable solutions that will develop the skills of the youth in Chad. We intend to promote socio-economic empowerment by enabling entrepreneurship opportunities through training 500 to 800 young entrepreneurs for a period of two years. We also aspire to certify up to 5,760 youth with the mastery in modern management skills which are critical to growth of Chad’s economy,” said Salia Gbane, Airtel Chad managing director.
The beneficiaries, empowered with fresh entrepreneurial potential, will have additional time to develop their skills in the field enabling them nurture small projects that will be supported by Airtel.
Ahmat Khazali Acyl, minister of Secondary Education, said: “We are extremely delighted by Airtel’s hearty gesture to partner with us. This project is likely to will create significant socio-economic opportunities in employment by honing the skills of young entrepreneurs. It is our responsibility as the government of Chad, joining hands with private sector partners like Airtel, to create concrete solutions that aim at eradicating poverty and improve the lives of the youth. This initiative is the start of new and great business models that will empower the youth and enable them play effective roles within the system.”
The initiative of the ICT training program by Airtel Chad is part of its contribution to development of education in Chad and assisting in the growth of the economy by nurturing young entrepreneurs across the country.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made it clear that all the banks using unlicensed third party electronic payment solution are subject to a fine of N10 million ($60551), which is part of the regime of sanctions contained in the guidelines on electronic payment of salaries, pensions, suppliers and taxes in Nigeria
The guidelines also say that, Non-availability of help desk/contact centre to receive enquiries, complaints and provide feedback on e-payment issues, will lead to suspension of the bank’s end-to-end e-payment operations until conditions are satisfied.
Non-Provision of monthly report on reported complaints & resolution status to the Bank attracts N25,000 penalty for each day for which report is not provided to the Bank, while submission of false or inaccurate reportswill attractpenalty of N250, 000 and a warning letter to the Managing Director.
The guidelines explained that, payment instructions and associated schedules are no longer to be transmitted to deposit money banks (DMBs)by all public and private sector organizations through unsecured channels, such as paper- based mandates, flash drives, compact discs (CD), email attachments , etc.
While nationwide commencement date of end-to-end e-payment of salaries, pensions, suppliers and taxes is January 9, 2014, compliance monitoring and enforcement will be in stages. This is to give enough time to all stakeholders to make necessary adjustments as may be required. Compliance monitoring and enforcement by CBN shall be according to the schedule below.
According to the apex bank all salaries, pensions, suppliers and taxes should be through end-to-end electronic payment.
The guidelines stated that banks are expected to:
Promote the adoption of end-to-end electronic payments by all stakeholders covered by the guidelines;
Provide paying organizations and beneficiaries with e-payment enabled bank accounts or any other approved electronic channel that promotes financial inclusion;
Process electronic payment instructions in accordance with subsisting payments system and clearing house rules;
Publish customer service contact details and maintain customer service desks in all branches, to promptly attend to all electronic payment enquiries and challenges within stipulated timelines;
Maintain and make available to the Bank, on a periodic basis, report of all electronic payment transactions processed and report of customer complaints, indicating resolution status.
Mahindra Comviva, the global leader in providing mobility solutions, launched its mobiquity® Wallet, a cutting-edge digital wallet platform.
It is a first of its kind fully integrated digital wallet platform that supports NFC, QR codes and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It offers security, ease of use and rich features to the customers of banks, telecom operators and retailers across the globe.
Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity® Wallet is a secure, easy to use and feature-rich digital wallet solution that works on multiple connected devices. It offers support for personalization, multiple value-added services and payment methods to enrich consumers’ path to purchase. To the wallet provider and their partners, it offers a robust and flexible platform, combining innovations in payments with attention to human factor, behavior-centered experience design and cutting edge digital technology.
Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior VP & Head of Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said: “Consumer needs are constantly evolving and we are proud to launch a digital wallet solution that focuses on consumer experience and purchase journey for payments. mobiquity® Wallet aims to deliver a connected experience to the consumers and is designed to support a large and complex ecosystem.”
mobiquity® Wallet bundles location based promotions, automated coupon redemption and loyalty card selection during checkout enabling single click payments. It can support integration into a merchant’s existing mobile application or web portal through checkout or allow in-app shopping by simply integrating into the merchant’s ERP.
“Our mobiquity® Wallet will allow businesses to re-engage and connect directly with their consumers, drive growth, and deepen their brand image by staying relevant to the change in markets and behaviours’,” added Srinivas.
The solution will enable businesses and their partners to fully leverage the potential of social media and data analytics for word of mouth advertising and one-on-one marketing.
HTC brags of it Desire 310 smartphone, which the company says is a budget smartphone that still packs a quad core processor although running at just 1.3Ghz speeds.
“Everybody today wants a smartphone that can keep up with them, regardless of whether it is a flagship or entry-level model” says Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “The latest addition to our renowned HTC Desire range combines super-fast processing and premium features at a lower price, offering users the best possible experience in this category.”
This phone has an offline reading mode which makes it possible forone to view articles from personal feed, drawn from more than 20,000 articles a day from the world’s leading media companies.
The pricing has not yet been confirmed but is expected to be at the lower end of the smartphone range. The HTC Desire 310 will be available with operators in Taiwan starting from April.
The company said that the Desire 310 makes some of the HTC One series’ most popular features available to those who want a more affordable handset.
The battle of supremacy between Airtel Kenya and Safaricom is still on, the two telecommunications companies have asked for more time to negotiate an out of court settlement in the Mobile Money market dominance squabble.
Last year, Airtel had filed a complaint against Safaricom accusing it of abusing its market dominance. Airtel said that safaricom was restricting the market to unhealthy competition thus closing the market outlets.
Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the country’s regulator, had asked the two parties to bring evidence for and against the claims but there has not been much negotiation to resolve the dispute.
Airtel appealed, but has now, along with the CCK and Safaricom asked the court to give them more time to seek a negotiated settlement.
They have until the 5th May to resolve the issue before it heads back to court.
The military has shut down telephone lines in Borno State Nigeria as it enters raids bases of of the Boko-Haram Islamic terrorists group, reports Nigeria’s Premium Times.
According to the paper, telephone users were on Wednesday shocked when they realized they couldn’t use their phones due to lack of network service in the state as the military shut them down to engage Boko Haram rebels.
The users had a “No service” notice every time they tried to reach their contacts. According to the paper, the Spokesman of the 7-Division of the Nigeria Army, Muhammed Dole, said the move was to allow the military to fight the terrorists group which has been a menace in the country since it was founded in 2009.
With over 4 million people, Borno State is located in the North East Geo-Political Zone of Nigeria and shares international boundaries with Republic of Niger and Chad in the north and Cameroon in the east. The state is rich in livestock and fishery products. Borno State has been under emergency rule since May 2014 and the shut down is worrying some residents thinking it might be long as it is a first major shut down of telephone lines since the June 2013 shutdown that lasted for six months.
“We all know the inconveniences that this might have brought, but it is a necessary and temporary measure that will not take long time” Dole told the paper. To him, the shut down is necessary sacrifice for the residents to help make peace in the state.
