Author: Cyrus

Vodafone is said to have acquired Essar India at a cost of $5 Billion. The valuation was decided four years ago when the UK operator acquired 67% of Hutchison’s Indian operations. This will give Vodafone 33% control at Essar India. In India there are Foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines which put a ceiling of 74%. It means that Vodafone would have to look for an Indian Investor willing to buy the 26% stake. Essar India has a 49% stake in Econet Wireless Kenya which in turn owns a chunk in Essar Kenya. This brings Vodafone as now indirect substantial shareholder in Essar…

BlackBerry  Travel, is a new app that provides BlackBerry smartphone users with an all-in-one integrated and contextual experience as they plan, book, manage and share travel activities quickly and easily, is now available in Kenya and Nigeria. The BlackBerry Travel app offers push notifications and integration of travel itineraries, profiles, and flight status updates into the familiar BlackBerry Calendar.  When a new booking confirmation or itinerary arrives in the user’s inbox, the BlackBerry Travel app is automatically updated with the relevant details, which makes travel planning and management easier than ever. With the BlackBerry push technology, the BlackBerry Travel app…

Orange has today signed agreements with two international organisations committing to help improve lives of communities. The occasion was graced by France Telecoms Vice President for East Africa Michel Barre and Telkom Kenya Chief Executive Officer Mickael Ghossein at the Telkom Kenya company headquarters in Nairobi. Orange signed agreements with Text to Change and mPedigree as part of a global initiative that will be undertaken in all East African countries that Orange operates in with a view to helping improve the quality of life among the people in respective countries. Text to Change is a Dutch non-governmental organisation that has led…

From today, you can access Facebook on your your yu phone network through the Peperusha platform. The social networking site is now available to subscribers without the need for an internet connection. Users of Peperusha – yu’s SMS chat and email service, can now update their facebook status or profiles, as well as chat with their friends and families using their standard mobile phones with no internet capabilities. The service will be charged at 25 cents per Facebook chat message or comment sent. Peperusha’s pay-as-you-go Facebook will help users manage costs, rather than relying on a pre-pay data bundle or…

There is a big mobile and fixed phone services operators conference which is set to start on Tuesday 5th to Wednesday 6th April in Nairobi. The event is part of the World Com Series of events and is very high profile with ticket prices in the range of tens of thousands of shillings. All the local cellphone and fixed line operators are scheduled to address the event with senior managers of Orange France, Vodafone, Zuku, Wananchi Group, Vivacell, MTN, and Safaricom among the lined speakers. Some of the countries whose operators are represented are Burundi, Comoros Islands, DR Republic Congo, Djibouti,…

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has gone into full effect as from 1st April, 2011. Kenyans who have cell phones can change networks without loosing their numbers. Now mobile services operators are luring clients of other operators with freebies. Safaricom is giving a total of Ksh 250 in airtime when you port. Immediately you move to Safaricom, you will receive Ksh 100 in airtime and Ksh 50 per month for 3 months. It will also give 50 Bonga (loyalty) points and 10MB bundles of data for the next 4 months. Airtel will waive the porting fee, Ksh 200, and will give…

Google –  It’s April Fool’s day and Google has pranked its users yet again. Google.com to day had a small link in its homepage under the search box that reads “New! Gmail Motion: Turn your email into a true body of work.” The link then took us also to the supposed  blog post introducing the new product, Gmail Motion, that Google says offers users “a new way to communicate.”  Google even went ahead and told us how typing is so last century. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu927_ul_X0 Google Docs Motion – Googlee also presented what it called Google Docs Motion which “will let you use your body to control…

HP has today announced that Google Cloud Print users can print directly to any HP ePrint-enabled printer from any Google Cloud Print supported app on any computer or smart phone. HP’s portfolio of web-connected and cloud-aware printers for home and business are the first to support Google Cloud Print out of the box. The combination of Google Cloud Print and HP ePrint printers makes printing from any web, mobile, or desktop app that supports Google Cloud Print more intuitive, accessible and useful by eliminating the need for a print driver or PC connection to the printer. Apps supported by Google…

The Secretary General of UN, Ban Ki Moon, was in Nairobi to officially open the “Greenest Building” in Kenya. The building is nature friendly and if fully solar powered with more than 6,000 square metres of Solar Panels. The function was also graced by the President, Mwai Kibaki, and a host of UN dignitaries. The building utilise sunlight to the maximum and lowers the need of electricity. The whole facility cost around $19 Million to put up. CO2 emissions were just 8.6 Million in 2004 but the UNEP say that by 2020, the level of emissions will be in the…

If you are among Safaricom M-PESA’s 13.5 million customers then good news for you. You can now receive international money transfers from 45 countries after an agreement between Safaricom and Western Union. From any of the 80,000 Western Union agent locations across the globe, including the U.S, Canada, Italy and the U.K., M-Pesa clients can conveniently receive money from the locations. This move is a game changer for Safaricom and Western Union. The mobile service provider, Safaricom, through its M-Pesa service, has been handling the kind of transactions which even Western Union just dream of. As the number portability becomes operational…

Yesterday we reportedt that Microsoft Corp was to announce its first IT pre-assembled component (ITPAC) data centre technology in Africa and the developing world. The facility was launched today by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, together with the energy-neutral building UN office in Nairobi. It servers consumes lots of power in any building. Microsoft’s ITPAC data centre is a big boosts to UN’s green technology endeavours of a carbon neutral facility. The ITPAC centre came about as part of a public-private initiative launched in 2009 where Microsoft provided consulting advice on why the data centre would be the best…

Our best estimates state that Africa is the last untapped frontier, as does the news coming from all around Africa. Attendees of the just concluded Africa Economic Forum mulled over how Africa can strengthen trade and investment, grapple with the demands for rapid ICT integration and other current issues facing Africa. The Forum (#cuaef) at Columbia University brought together students, academics, industry experts, and other representatives from across the continent, and the world. If the lively banter, earnest debate and the display of innovative approaches to working in Africa is anything to go by, we have the tools to do…

Microsoft is Set to launch its 4th generation Cloud Data Centres at the United Nations Offices in Nairobi, UNON. The Generation 4 data centre are touted to reduce the cost of expansion of data centres by 60%. The facility is new and has been previously installed in Dublin Ireland and Chicago US centres. According to Microsoft, “An IT Pre-Assembled Components (ITPAC) is a pre-manufactured, fully-assembled module that can be built with a focus on sustainable materials such as steel and aluminum and can house as little as 400 servers and as many as 2,000 servers, significantly increasing flexibility and scalability”.…

Intel Corporation and the Kenya Institute of Education have today announced a joint commitment to roll out a digital education curriculum which has been in development for some time. The curriculum is set to transform how students interact with teachers in the classroom. The event was graced by KIE Director Lydia Nzomo and Intel Regional Director in-charge of Africa, Middle east and Turkey, Ms Aysegul Ildeniz. Intel has been working with KIE for the last 3 years in the areas of development of the digital curriculum for Maths and Sciences for class 4 – 7. Ms Aysegul said that Intel…

yu has moved to clarify that it is ready for mobile number portability set to be launched on Friday. There were reports that most operators had not done cross-operator tests of the success in portability. Now the mobile operator says it has not approached CCK for an extension of the deadline and is finalizing preparations for the launch. yu’s Country Manager Madhur Taneja said:“We would like to tell everybody that we are ready for number portability and have done our test runs with all the mobile operators. Both prepaid and postpaid customers will be able to port come 1st April…