Author: Cyrus

Telecommunications solutions provider Telkom Kenya has announced the stepping up of an ongoing 20% Bonus for prepaid airtime top up across its range of products. The move geared at rewarding and continuously bringing the Orange suite of products and services closer to the people, was unveiled a week ago ahead of St. Valentine’s Day and will continue running to the end of the month. Consequently, throughout the month of February, all Orange prepaid customers on the network’s Orange Mobile, Orange Wireless and Telkom Fixed services will receive a 20% bonus every time they top-up their accounts. Speaking when he reiterated…

Kuwaiti telecommunications provider Zain said Monday its board agreed to enter into exclusive 
talks until March 25 with Bharti, India’s largest cellphone 
operator. Zain said a day earlier it had received a bid for the African 
division from an unnamed suitor, but did not name the price or 
respond to unsourced reports that a deal had been reached. The sale does not include Zain’s holdings in Sudan or Morocco. Zain says the deal is subject to due diligence and regulatory
 approval.  — Sapa-AP

London, Barcelona Monday 15 February, 2010. Vodafone has announced what it calls “the most affordable ultra low cost handsets to date, intended to give millions of people in emerging markets the opportunity to share in the benefits of mobile technology for the first time”. The Vodafone 150 and 250 handsets will be sold first in India, Turkey , The Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Qatar, South Africa and Tanzania. Vodafone believes thats it is in emerging markets such as these that the potential of the mobile phone as a powerful social enabler is most apparent. More than…

Nokia now plans to release the Nokia N87 with a 12MP camera and multi-touch capabilities according to release documents for the smartphone which have appeared on YouTube in the last few months. The documents show that he Nokia N87 will combine the N8x range’s multimedia capabilities with the new Symbian3 OS supporting multi-touch gestures. According to the Youtube document, the N87 will have a 12-megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and night-view mode, along with a 600MHz ARM Cortex 8 processor and 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. It becomes clear that the Nokia N87 will be the Finnish…

The much awaited East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), which was expected to land at Mtunzini, KwaZulu Natal , South Africa, during the weekend finally landed this morning at 8.04am, Telkom South Africa Group Communication and Brand Specialist told Techmtaa in press release through email. The landing was planned initially for Saturday but Telkom’s Pynee Chetty, said the company Alcatel-Lucent, tasked with connecting the under-sea cables with the ones outside (off-shore) failed to do so over the weekend, however the cable landed this morning. Telkom is a landing partner of the cable. EASSy total length is 10.000 km. It’s an…

Local data and Voice service provider, Orange Kenya has moved to re-launch their unlimited data offer. The offer which initially expired on 5th February has now been extended. The first offer from Orange was more of a reactionary move to Safaricom after Safaricom launched an unlimited data offer of Ksh 999 per week. The initial adverts on Safaricom offer listed 8th as the date of expiry but that might have been intentional or “by mistake” as one senior manager at Safaricom told me. Instead of the Safaricom offer expiring on 8th February as listed in initial adverts, Safaricom went ahead…

A bank employee from Macquarie bank in Sydney, Australia, was unwittingly captured on a live interview looking at semi-nude pictures of a famous model, Miranda Kerr. The employee’s colleague was being interviewed by Channel 7, a financial channel on Australian TV when he began to look at the semi-nude photos of Miranda Kerr. Maybe the employee named David Kiely was trying to release stree with few glimpses, but he was just not aware that he was live on TV and the video went viral on the internet.

A Kenyan was one of the top Students from 41 countries in EEM who pitched their skills against each other in the final of the EEM Netriders Networking Competition. He was among a total of 117 contestants, who had won places in the final following a series of local competitions and heats, battled it out simultaneously across a five hour time zone. There were three students from Kenya who had previously participated in a National Competition on the 17th of June participated in this event. The finalists were challenged to a one hour multiple-choice quiz and 90 minute practical networking…

Integrated telecommunications solutions provider Telkom Kenya has moved to implore its subscribers to keep away from purchasing gray handsets or risk being prosecuted for facilitating the reprogramming of mobile phone handsets. Following the presidential assent of the Kenya Communications (amendment) bill of 2008, reprogramming of network locked handsets sourced locally or from abroad was effectively outlawed and a punitive Kshs 1million fine introduced. Speaking when he responded to queries over increased cases of mobile phone unblocking, Telkom Kenya Chief Executive Officer Mr Mickael Ghossein reiterated the illegal aspect of mobile phone unblocking and challenged the police and the Communications Commission…

Google has awarded Africa Practice a contract to handle Google’s PR in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa. The assignment comes as Google attempts to fight bad publicity, promote the usage of internet and google products as well as fight for internet penetration in the continent. The Google Africa account will be managed locally by teams in the six countries, with strategic direction from South Africa , Kenya and London. The Google account is being led by Africa Practice corporate comms director Alison Merifield.

KDN on Wednesday launched what it billed as a “system which will set the pace for flexibility and security in financial transactions”. The gateway is a multi-channel solution which will turn mobile phones into a means of secure electronic transaction platform. It looks to solve the problem of phobia or non-penetration of cards in Africa. The system which was launched is exactly what we predicted to be. It is the same system which the Spanish company is selling. The features are exactly the same though KDN CEO Kai Wulff says that its a KDN local creation which has not foreign…

The competition on mobile commerce or M-Commerce is heating up locally with KDN, the largest data provider calling journalists to a coacktail dinner today at Serena Hotel. It will be a launch party for an M2M and Mobile POS system called MObipay. KDN seems to have teamed up with some spanish company to localise the already existing system. This comes after Orange hinting that they are soon loon launching a mobile payment solution like M-pesa. Yu launched Obopay and Zain runs Zap which all have not been able to contain the massive consumer urge for M-Pesa. KDN lists the solution…

After fumbling with the Gwave and Orkut,  Google on Tuesday 9th February announced the launch of their new product, Google Buzz. The  product aims to compete with facebook on the social media scene as it intergrates status updates and photo and video sharing. It will be available on Mobile with Google Buzz for business to follow. The tagline according to blog post on Google Buzz is “a Google approach to sharing.” This is probably Google’s boldest effort yet to get social. It is taking on Facebook and Twitter as well as start-ups such as Foursquare . The new service has…

I browse through groups which my friends are joining in facebook and I meet this one titled “Men Against the Valentines Initiative (M.A.V.I)”. Now there is no problem with being against anything but MAVI is a very dirty word in Swahili. It translates more to wastes from the body which seems to be what the grou thinks Valentines is. The group is gaining membership at a fast rate and majority are men apart from the few naughty women out there who wont be scared of telling men off or simply watching what men are up-to. And a good number of women…

University of Texas RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service and Dell have launched a Social Innovation Challenge which expects to spur innovation by students throughout the world. The challenge whose goal is to provide a vehicle for taking student innovations from idea to reality, Dell’s Social Innovation Competition is a real-world exercise for perfecting your skills in: Project/business plan development Pitching ideas to investors Building resource networks

Naspers / MIH group is, according to Polish newspaper reports, the largest Internet group in Western Europe, is conducting checks on assets belonging to  Forticom owned by Digital Sky Technology. Naspers Group and DST already together own the largest Russian online portal Mail.ru If it goes through, the deal would see Naspers/MIH and DST merge their Polish Internet properties like IM service Gadu-Gadu which  is wholly owned by Naspers and has 15 million registered users. Polish biggest social network,  Nasza-Klasa.pl which is 70% owned by Forticom and claims over 23 million registered users, will also be under Naspers after the deal.…