Author: Cyrus

yuMobile is rolling-out Relationship Centres in Kenya. Tod saw the opening of the first centre in Nairobi Central Business District. The Centre is the second of several new-look relationship centres to be rolled out countrywide as part of yuMobile’s expansion plan intended to serve its rapidly growing number of subscribers countrywide. The new-look Relationship Centre is located at Nairobi’s Gilfillan House along Kenyatta Avenue and will provide a range of services such as yuMobile data settings, postpaid activation, bill payments, selling of prepaid lines, airtime, modems and handset sales. Customers who visit the center will also enjoy free calls booth,…

Google has announced a new mobile version of Google Trader in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda . In a blog post, the search company say that it has “reorganized the mobile site to reduce clutter and emphasize the most important information”. Google Trader is now also panning out well on phones with smaller screens, according to the blog post.

A new research by Portland (a communication research firm) indicates that users in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco tweets most. The research titled How Africa Tweets and released today shows that most users of Twitter in Africa access it from a mobile phone (57%) while the 20 – 29 years age group dominate the social media site. The data was collected by Portland and Tweetminster analysing 500 most active Twitter accounts in Africa. The study found that; South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4…

YoungAfricaLive (YAL) has finally been launched by Praekelt Foundation and Safaricom. Kenya is the second country in East Africa after Tanzania but third after South Africa also which used to enjoy the mobile community services live. YAL Tanzania was launched on 1 December 2011. The YoungAfricaLive (YAL) portal gives the youth a platform to speak their minds, through a medium that is accessible, and encourage conversations on topics that impacts their lives positively. The portal is available to users in Kenya through through SafaricomLIVE portal on www.safaricom.com/wap or through . While YoungAfricaLive Tanzania is available free to Vodacom subscribers through http://m.vodacom.co.tz,…

Orange Kenya launched its unlimited data bundles last week. There was a disclaimer which the company looked to hide as much as possible. First things first. In the “unlimited data bundles”, Orange is offering an unlimited data bundle for 7 days at Ksh 990 and one for 30 days at Ksh 2,990. There is a fair usage policy disclaimer which means that if you are a heavy data user, your usage will be limited in quality. That means that if you download or upload more than the threshold set on the network, your download and uploads will be limited to a certain speed.…

The government of Zambia has said that it will take over the running of Zamtel for the time being before floating shares to the public.
 Finance Minister, Alexander Chikwanda, is quoted by Times of Zambia as having informed journalists at a media briefing  that “Zamtel was a viable company
 which the previous Government wanted to give away in a corrupt manner.
” Mr Chikwanda said that the government would look to stabilise the state corporation before floating shares to the public. The government also said that it was looking at the interest of Zamtel employees. “We shall recapitalize Zamtel and make it viable. Zamtel…

Tanzania’s Zamtel has moved from 100, 000 to a million customers in less than 12 months. Information posted on Zambian Watchdog website quotes Zamtel Chief Commercial Officer, Amon Jere, attributing the one million milestone to the leadership. Zamtel has over the past 12 months been investing on network expansion. The firm has increased its GSM bases stations from 261 sites to over 400 with over 250 new sites in key cities being 3G enabled. Zamtel was the last of the three mobile operators to launch mobile services in 2003. 75% of the former state corporation was divested to Libya’s LAP Green Network The…

One of the world’s largest file-sharing sites was shut down yesterday (Thursday), and executives arrested and charged with violating piracy laws. The US authorities accuse Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders over $500 million in lost revenue. It is funny that the indictment comes just almost 24 hours after thee online community protested the two proposed anti-piracy laws. The US authorities said that the move has nothing to do with the SOPA / PIPA outrage: Investigators said there was no connection between arrests in their two-year investigation and the political firestorm that erupted this week over a pending vote on the Stop Online…

Orange signed to be be the main sponsor of CAF for 8 years. The competition will then be referred to as Orange Africa Cup of Nations till 2016. Through this deal, Orange has exclusive “new media” right of the game as well as TV and Mobile rights in France. Orange has announced that it will be streaming the 8 of the 32 matches of the 2012 Orange Africa Cup of Nations through this link. The competition will also be the 28th since when it was launched and will be held in Gabon from tomorrow (21st January). After the opening ceremony,…

Iran’s highest court, supreme court, has upheld the death sentence for a web programmer (Saeed Malekpour ) who developed software for uploading photos on porn sites. Saeed Malekpour was arrested in October 2008 and taken to a prison in Tehran. He was put in solitary confinement for more than one year without even access to his lawyer nor any charges being conferred on him. A year later, Saeed appeared in a state TV programme confessing to all many crimes related the porn site charges. He was later convicted by a court in Tehran on the basis of his TV confessions and handed…

Safaricom has announced that it will be carrying out M-Pesa upgrade for ten hours on Saturday. The scheduled service will be carried out between 8 pm on Saturday (January 21st) and 6 am on Sunday (January 22nd), the M-PESA service will not be available then. The upgrade is expected to enhance the M-PESA offering and ensure that the platform continues to deliver more innovative services. Said Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, “We wish to thank our customers for their continued support and understanding and assure them that this upgrade is necessary in order to grow the M-PESA service menu and improve…

Huawei has announced that it has been selected to deploy western Africa’s first LTE TDD commercial network for ZODA FONES, Nigeria’s leading telecoms operator.  The network will adopt Huawei’s end-to-end SingleRAN LTE TDD solution. It will cover the capital of Nigeria and its surrounding areas to provide end-users with high-speed and abundant data services. Based on a thorough analysis of the operator’s requirements and the mobile market situation in western Africa, Huawei proposed that Nigeria employ its end-to-end SingleRAN LTE TDD solution, consisting of radio access network and core network solutions. The high spectrum efficiency and maximized spectrum asset value…

Orange has finally launched the iPhone 4S into the Kenyan market. A statement from Orange Kenya puts the iPhone 4S 16GB model at KSh 74,899, 32GB model at KSh 87,999  and the 64GB model at KSh 101,499. The phones will be available at Orange shops from tomorrow.

A Kenyan has created an alarm system which locks burglars or intruders into the house and screams for help. The idea which is not new but is unique because Peter Miano has used locally available materials to make his simple home alarm system. Peter lives in a low income neigbourhood called Kayole in Nairobi. To make the alarm, Peter has used electronic wastes like magnetic coils, wires and transistors to create a working alarm system. The story was first highlighted by Zainab Wandati of NTV in December. It cannot be said that Peter invented this kind of alarm because the…

Al-Shabaab has tonight tweeted photos of the captured Kenyan government officials. The terrorist organisation’s twitter handle released the photos of Fredrick Irungu (Immigration Clerk) and Edward Mule (District Officer) few minutes after 9pm Kenyan time. #KenyanPoW: Yesse, Mule Edward, 30 year-old Kenyan Government District Officer (DO) for Burderi, Wajir South twitter.com/HSMPress/statu… — HSM Press Office (@HSMPress) January 18, 2012 The account seems to be run by someone who is taking lots of caution on how he/she logs in. The language looks so American stoking the fear that some US Islamic extremists are aiding the organisation in its terror activities.…