Author: Cyrus

Kenya Airways has today launched a mobile service which solely depend on USSD. The service developed by local IT firm Cellulant, will see the airline deliver information on their customer’s mobile phones. The service dubbed ‘KQ Mobile’ can be accessed through the short code *737# and will allow the airline’s customers to access information on their flight status, timetable, cargo services, ticketing and query their Msafiri Miles status. The KQ Mobile platform can also be accessed while roaming across all 56 Kenya Airways destinations. The service comprises bulk SMS and USSD platforms. Bulk SMS enables the sending of SMSs to the…

Six Telecoms Data has launched its new Metro Network in Tanzania. The comprehensive data network covers Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Moshi, Mwanza, Shinyanga, Dodoma, Morogoro, Iringa, Mbeya, and Mtwara. The Telecoms Data Metro Network was designed with corporates in mind. The company has indicated that it built the network to Tier-1 carrier grade redundancy specifications, meaning that the company built the Metro Network for companies that cannot afford to lose connectivity ever! Connections to customer premises are provided via digital Fiber Optic Cable and have a redundant licensed microwave link to ensure uptime, this includes global internet access via all…

The second tranche of Tandaa grants were dispersed yesterday. And the winners, as you expected, are not surprising. They are either people who have known Paul Kukubo and Bitange Ndemo for sometime or just seems to have secret deals with him. It does not mean that some of the beneficiaries are not well deserving Kenyans. Many are and I must confess that the 2012/2013 Tandaa grant awards have seen more truly Kenyan companies win including Virtual City and Eat Out. Again the fund disbursement has been changed from single instalment cash-out to 12 month instalments cash-out. But we still have the usual tech colonialists…

Safaricom has unveiled a new campaign which comes after the much talked about 2010 Niko na Safaricom ad. The new video has different sceneries and the Niko na Safaricom soundtrack is also at a much slower tempo than then 2010’s. Some of the scenes I can pick from the advert are Olduvai Gorge, Hell’s Gate, Lake Naivasha, Mau Escarpment, Mt Longonot, Mt Kenya and Lake Turkana. It is not clear what Safaricom has spent to create the current campaign but the 2010 campaign was reported to have cost Safaricom some clean $1 Million. Safaricom was even accused of copy pasting from the Spirit…

InMobi has announced the launch of its new mobile conversion tracking platform, Adtracker. The tracker will help in provviding real-time analytics allowing advertisers to measure multiple conversions on both mobile web and app campaigns, across all advertising networks and publishers. The InMobi Ad Tracker is separate from the InMobi ad network, not reliant on UDIDs, and is completely free to integrate and use. With this combination, InMobi looks to provide an independent, scalable and cost-effective solution for managing mobile campaign performance in a rapidly growing market. Chandrashekhar Vattikuti, VP of Products at InMobi, comments: “The industry has been aware for…

Samsung has just revealed the Galaxy S3 smartphone. Check it out here. Samsung I9300 Galaxy SIII at a glance: General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 850/900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 21 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps; 4G (regional)) Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone Dimensions: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, 133 g Display: 4.8″ 16M-color HD (720 x 1280 pixels) Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, Gorilla Glass CPU: Quad-core 32nm ARM Cortex A9 1.4 GHz processor, Exynos 4212 Quad chipset GPU: Mali-400MP RAM: 1GB OS: Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Memory: 16/32/64GB storage, microSD card slot Camera: 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection, touch focus and image stabilization; Full HD (1080p) video recording at…

After the death of M-Kesho, Airtel Kenya got the drift and seems to have been looking for the appropriate partner. Now the company has launched what can be a successor to M-Kesho. Questions have been asked about what happened to M-Kesho. Safaricom still  maintains that the service is operational while sources at Equity indicate that the service was discontinued after disagreements on which of the two firms should foot the bill. The Bharti Airtel owned company in partnership with Faulu Kenya has today launched a service where Airtel Money customers access cash on their mobile phones via Airtel Money. The…

  President Kibaki has today praised Kenyan On Twitter for using social media as a tool to promote development, peace and cohesion. Addressing a media convention at the KICC, President Kibaki said that was pleased to learn that Kenya is ranked second on the African continent in the use of Twitter. Kibaki, however, challenged users of these new media platforms across Africa to exercise their freedoms responsibly and use these them to promote development, peace and cohesion. “This rapid growth of technology use is promising to transform societies in ways perhaps unthinkable only a few years ago. It has enabled the…

Business Process Outsourcing is critical in Kenya’s development as it has created opportunities for youth employability in the country, Baris Vural, a director at Techno Brain Group has said. Baris thanked the Government for identifying the BPO sector of the IT industry as key towards realization of Vision 2030. Mr. Vural urged Government to invest in training youth in BPO skills from which BPO companies would recruit staff. He said Techno Brain group has trained and employed about 400 staff working at its BPO division. This move, he said, besides creating employment to the youth, has made services in various…

The world’s top mobile phone vendor, Samsung Electronics, through its East Africa subsidiary has entered into a joint partnership with Strathmore University  to rollout a digital learning solution. Through the agreement and beginning this May, Strathmore University students enrolling to pursue their Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) program will receive their course content and related materials digitally through the Samsung Learning Management Solution [Samsung LMS]. Replication an idea which was first tried in Korea, Strathmore University’s Executive MBA students will be issued with a Galaxy 10.1 Tab with all the education content installed and or accessed from the Samsung Galaxy Tablets.…

Airtel’s mobile commerce product, Airtel Money, has been adjudged the ‘Best Mobile Money Service’ in Ghana at the Mobile World Ghana Telecoms Awards. Airtel Money has been praised by industry players for its innovative features and secured nature. The service has been expanding over the past few months roping in more banks and business outlets in the process. The organizers of the awards say Airtel Money was found to be the best among similar services deployed on the market and provided a seamless, simple to understand mobile based experience for users while at the same time being reliable, consistent and…

IDC is showing some interesting trends in the worldwide mobile phone market in the last one year.  The IDC report indicate that the worldwide mobile phone market declined 1.5% year over year in the first quarter of 2012 (1Q12). Also, Samsung has finally completely dethroned Nokia as the world’s top mobile phone vendor. The Nokia numbers look pathetic and an article on TechCrunch rightly blames it on Nokia’s arrogance. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, mobile handset vendors shipped 398.4 million units in 1Q12 compared to 404.3 million units in the first quarter of…

This is funny. The sentiments on the net is such that ODM is trending and not UDF which Musalia Mudavadi has moved to.

According to a blog post appearing on social media news site, Mashable, Twitter is reported to be in the process of developing a paid version of the micro-blogging platform. The social media site’s CEO, Dick Costolo, is said to have told a Wired business conference in New York City Tuesday afternoon. Mashable reports that an audience member asked Costolo whether Twitter would ever introduce a “pro” version for individual users. Dick Costolo refused to confirm whether Twitter was working to develop such a platform but the CEO indicated that it is an idea which Twitter was looking into. Mashable reports Costolo…

According to an article appearing in today’s Business Daily newspaper, undersea Fibre Optic Cable operator, the East African Marine Cable System (TEAMs), has sued the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) and a shipping firm for Sh1.2 billion over recent cable cuts that interrupted voice and data businesses for a month. The undersea fibre cut incident which caused a major data outage in East Africa was caused by a ship owned by Athena Shipping on 25th February. The ship dragged its anchor on a restricted water path and destroyed the undersea cable, interrupting telecoms services in the one month that it was…