ICTworks by Inveneo

Safaricom will begin a technical trial of the 4G (fourth generation) technology on its network within the next two months. The roll out of the next generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology (4G) will be carried out Huawei Technologies. The two companies signed a three year strategic partnership under which Safaricom selected Huawei as its vendor of choice for the supply of its core network requirements, and roll out the 4G network at a cost of KES12bn.

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Michael Joseph said once the 4G network becomes operational, Safaricom customers will be able to enjoy high speeds of 600megabit per seconds or 1.5 gigabit per seconds in both downloads and uploads.

The new technology will enable Safaricom to deliver a combination of services like data, voice, and video and download services like iTunes which will be billed through a different charging system.

He said in the next two years the company will overhaul its current system to march the precepts of the LTE technology .The first phase will include installation of the operating system for the prepaid system, followed by upgrading of the postpaid system which will later will include converging both systems to have one billing system.

Kenyan consumers are rightly excited that the mobile phone company Zain, now owned by Bharti Airtel, has kicked off a price war with just announced unprecedented low and permanent new tariffs of Kes. 3.00 to call and Kes. 1.00 per SMS message to any mobile network in Kenya. This huge price reduction caused such a storm of traffic on Zain's network, they actually had connectivity problems with other mobile phone companies.

Safaricom, the dominant mobile phone company in Kenya, is responding with the "Masaa Tariff" - Safaricom customers will be able to make calls within the network at between Kes. 2.00 to Kes 4.00, with Kes. 2.00 per minute now the lowest calling rate on any mobile network operator in the Kenyan market. Orange/Telkom Kenya has matched this pricing and other mobile phone companies are expected to follow suit with their own price decreases in the coming days.

This price war is an obvious benefit to all Kenyans in lowering the barrier to using mobile devices, but what about its impact on ICT companies? How does the mobile price war help ICT adoption and sales volume beyond just dropping call and SMS costs? Here's three ways:

1. Visible Impact of Good Government Policy

The mobile phone price war started when the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) cut interconnection tariffs by 50%, based on a report that determined the existing interconnection rates were way too high. A second tariff lowering will occur in 2011.

This immediate price war is a big, bold validation that lowering government-controlled tariffs directly benefits its citizens where there is already a decent level of competition. Hopefully the regulators in other countries who control mobile and Internet rates will realize that lowering those rates is a net benefit for everyone

2. Stimulate More Services & Innovation

Now that voice and especially SMS are no longer the fat cash cows of quarters past, Safaricom and Zain will need to bring more services and more innovation to the mobile subscriber to maintain their revenue per user. This means more than just M-PESA and its clones, but also new data services and even whole new solutions.

For ICT companies this is an opportunity to sell new mobile services to these companies and their subscribers - Safaricom and Zain will be hungry for new ideas. It's also an opportunity to build on the new services they roll out, with value-added solutions. Many have already done this with SMS, data, and M-PESA and your underlying connectivity costs are only going to drop, increasing your profit margins.

3. Increase Customer Respect

Last but not least, ICT companies as customers of the mobile companies should start to see more attention paid to them. Each business subscriber is going to be come more valuable, as they are the high-usage and high-income clients in Kenya. This will only be more apparent when mobile number portability comes to the Kenyan market.

For larger ICT companies (and even small ones) it is a good time to review your current contracts with mobile providers and see if you can reduce costs and increase services. You may even get the mobile company representatives to have a bit of humility. Or as this tweet from Rombokins says:

Raila Odinga registering to vote in 4 minutes flat

Regardless of their political affiliations, ICT firms should be pushing electronic voter registration and voting in every country of Africa. Why? Not only does it increase participation in the elections process, and make it more transparent, it also makes great business sense.

Here's an example from Business Daily Africa: the Kenyan constitutional referendum earned several suppliers of technology goods and Internet services millions of shillings when the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) used electronic registration and voting in 18 constituencies.

Nokia, the largest handset manufacturer, supplied IIEC with 18,000 mid-tier mobiles worth Sh38 million, according to documents seen by Business Daily. Listed telecom firm Safaricom provided 100 megabytes (MB) of data for each of the mobiles, earning it over Sh2 million in the two-day process.

Apart from handsets, the IIEC staff used laptops and other peripheral devices to conduct voter registration, voting, and tallying of results. The electoral body has said it plans to spend about Sh32 billion in a step by step process to build the infrastructure that would see Kenyans vote electronically in 20,000 polling centres around the country by 2012.

Now that's a political change I think every ICT company can vote for!

This is the bombshell that Erik Hersman tweeted about Safaricom's mPayment system, M-Pesa. Read it and then stop to think a minute about what that means for Kenya:

If one company moves 20% of country's GDP, and that company is not even a bank, just want does that tell you about the rise of mobile phone operators in Africa? Here are three thoughts that leap out at me:

1. For the first time, telecommunications companies are now "too big to fail" - they are such a force in a country's economy, they are now of strategic interest to national governments.
2. With such success, mPayment innovation will be severely curtailed in other countries. Banks will demand to lead mobile payment processes - they'll not loose that much business again
3. mPayments are now a business requirement, too many potential customers use it for a company to ignore it as payment option.

But don't think that Safaricom is resting on its laurels even though it owns the mPayment space in Kenya. They're now launching M-Kesho, which enables M-Pesa customers to perform basic banking transactions like deposit and transfer savings via their handsets

With innovations like this, 20% of Kenya's GDP may even be a conservative estimate.

Just last week, it looked like Facebook would own the Internet relationship in a dozen African countries. Now, I'd say that Safaricom, a leader in innovation on the mobile phone, has just brought the ultimate killer app to any handset in Kenya: email.

Email is the killer app

No matter how many websites you visit, your entire web browsing experience pales in comparison with the amount of time and attention you give email. Its always been (and will most likely remain) the real killer app for any platform. And check out how Safaricom will own that relationship in Kenya.

Kipokezi from ForgetmeNot Africa

Kipokezi allows you to send and receive email and chat messages from ANY Safaricom mobile phone using SMS, regardless of the make and model of their mobile phone.

Kipokezi is a product from FrogetmeNot Africa, which uses their eTXT message to send and receive seamlessly as an SMS, an email or chat message on any carriers network via SMS. No need for downloads to the phone, internet, PC access or a change in user behaviour.

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