Author: Cyrus

Kenya ICT Board today announced the first batch of winners of the public sector grant. This competition was open to all content creators including but not limited to software developers, film, animation, advertising, publishing, gaming and education professionals’ . The competition closed on July 19th, 2010 with 667 applications submitted. The grant is to promote local innovations in the content, applications and web categories. The Tandaa Local Digital Content Grant worth Ksh 300M which is around USD 4M, is the largest content grant in Africa and will be disbursed over three years. In the first round, the board will disburse…

Safaricom says through a press release that it expects to begin 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 by Chinese Company, Huawei Technologies. The two companies signed a three year strategic partnership that will see Safaricom select Huawei as its vendor of choice for the supply of its core network requirements, and roll out the 4G network, at a cost of Shs12 billion.

Although the United Arab of Emirates (UAE) has banned the use of Blackberry mobile telephones, one of Tanzania mobile phone communications providers, Zantel, has said that the decision was only applicable in the UAE and so wont affect it. Zantel is a subsidiary of Etilasat which has been affected by the UAE ban. This assurance from Zantel comes as a growing number of its clients are worried that the UAE ban might affect them. Zantel Acting CEO Norman Morris tolda weekly magazine  in Dar es Salaam last weekthat the blockade of Blackberry services in the UAE will absolutely not affect…

Zain Kenya which is soon to be called Bharti Airtel is not relenting in its effort to be the Kenyan communication market leader. It has today launched Sh5 and Sh10 denomination scratch cards. The move follows the company’s aggressive entry into the mass market segment and subsequent 50 per cent reduction in call charges to any network in Kenya.

East Africa’s rapidly expanding ICT sector will receive a further boost next month when computing and communications professionals from throughout the region convene in Nairobi for the first AITEC East Africa ICT Summit. Held under the auspices of the Ministry of Information & Communications, the Summit will gather ICT suppliers, service providers, innovators, managers and policy-makers to share knowledge and network in a two-day conference and expo over 7-8 September. Sean Moroney, Chairman of AITEC Africa, organisers of the event, said that the event is designed to further catalyse East Africa’s ICT industry following the landing of undersea fibre cables…

East African tourism industry stakeholders are set to benefit immensely from discourses on e tourism to be presented at a regional e tourism conference set for early next week. The conference, which will feature global online giants such as Trip Advisor and Expedia, will focus on how East Africa’s tourism sector can harness the potential of the web, especially following the enormous interest generated in Africa from the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The conference comes in the wake of increased optimism in Kenyan tourism sector following a peaceful referendum and an impending promulgation of a new constitution on Friday August…

Zain Kenya has finally joined twitter and is recieving lots of TweetLove. The communications services provider joined Twitter 3 hours ago and the followers are rising by the minute. Both Orange and Safaricom have been in twitter for a while with both joining the micro-blogging site this year. When Safaricom joined twitter this year, it recieved lots of Tweethate than TweetLove . Safaricom joined Twitter on 25the March 2010 while Orange joined twitter on 9th March 2010. It is only Safaricom which has been consistent in social media with lots of adverts in Facebook and through Google Adwords. Zain seems…

Kenya Data Networks (KDN) and PCCW Global, a premier telecommunications provider based in Hong Kong. have signed a Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Inter-Carrier Interconnection agreement to extend services to more than 110 countries worldwide. The new technology is faster, compared to the traditional routed networks, which process the information at every router throughout the network. KDN Chief Executive Officer, Rikus Matthyser said that the new technology will speed up the process of sending data through the Multi-Protocol Label Switching, a data packet forwarding technology with improved forwarding speed of routers by using labels to make data forwarding decisions faster.

Telkom Kenya today has officially launched on net tariff of Ksh 2/-  and slashed its off net tariff to Ksh 4/- for its GSM customers following the revision of interconnection rates by the Communications Commission of Kenya. The new tariff also comes with an additional benefit of free calls from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. for only Ksh 100 top up per month across all Orange networks such as Orange mobile, Orange wireless and Telkom Fixed (landline). Making the announcement in Nairobi today Mr.  Ghossein said, “Effective today midnight, both our Orange GSM post and pre- paid customers will enjoy…

In a move that is like to NOT excite the local market, Kenya’s leading telecoms operator Safaricom has today unveiled a new tariff promotion that will see its subscribers call from as much as Sh2 per minute compared to Ksh 1 from the competition. The Sh2 a minute charge is twice as expensive as that which was introduced by Zain in the Kenyan market recently. Under the new scheme called Masaa Tariff, customers will be able to make calls within the network at between Sh2-4, depending on the value of their last top-up. Calls to other operators will cost Sh3-5.

CCK announced new rates after a report by a study group it commisioned found out that the interconnection rates were way too high. CCK immediately announced the following rates; MOBILE TERMINATION RATES EXISTING 2010 CHANGE 2011 CHANGE 4.42 2.21 1.44 PERCENTAGE CHANGE 50% 35% LOCAL TERMINATION RATES EXISTING 2010 CHANGE 2011 CHANGE 1.67 1.67 1.33 PERCENTAGE CHANGE 44% 20% SINGLE TANDEM EXCHANGE 3.01 Zain Kenya immediately announced a 50% reduction in the rates and went full swing into accepting new clients. Zain might have or might have not envisanged a scramble for its services and Safaricom CEO, Michael Joseph was…

Listed telecoms operator Safaricom has moved to reassure its competitor Zain Kenya, saying concerns raised by the latter over Safaricom’s handling of traffic originating from its network were somewhat premature. “We must admit that we are quite surprised by the claims made by Zain that we are trying to stifle the delivery of their traffic to our network. These claims are quite insincere considering that Zain is fully aware of the procedures that all operators must adhere to when seeking to increase their inter-connect traffic capacity,” said Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph. “Under the agreement the inter-connect pipe belongs to them…

The latest web-based trend in transmission of information and communication across the globe is the next frontier in the advertisement world even as the most efficient internet connectivity hits Kenya’s mainland. Advertisement platform in various World Wide Web (www) and search engines are gradually threatening the traditional form of advertisements including the Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Television and Outdoor advertisements.

Google just made it better for the loyal users of its Gmail application. Through a blog post on the official Google Docs blog, you can now search mails, sites and docs all withing Gmail. After you enable  Gmail Labs tab under Settings, the “Search Mail” button in Gmail will say “Search Mail and Docs” instead, and your search results will include matching documents and sites in addition to email messages. Google also added the “Did You Mean” functionality to help you in suggesting what you might have meant.

Gloves are off and the mobile operators seem to be so determined to end the Safaricom dominance. Orange initiated this by pulling one of the biggest coup in the market. Orange managed to convince the biggest distributor of the dominant player to join its network of distributors. Zain is following suit by now openly attacking Safaricom with the line “Going Green is not always the Better Option”. Green is Safaricom’s colour and “The Better Option” is Safaricom tagline. I don’t know what is waking the operators but the market is now at the disadvantage of the consumer. Zain has launched…