Table des matières - Performances Group

Transcription

Semaine 39 – du 26 septembre au 02 octobre 2011
N° 193
Table des matières
Bouygues Telecom mise sur sa box unique pour s'imposer dans la technologie ------- 3
Après le rachat de TuNet, Tunisiana fait le premier pas en direction d’une offre
télécom globale ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
Le timbre à J + 2 « représentera les deux tiers des volumes de courrier d'ici à
trois à cinq ans » -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5
Afrique: Le Prix Orange de l'Entrepreneur social en Afrique rejoint les prestigieux
AfricaCom Awards ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
Maroc Telecom, parmi les 100 entreprises les plus innovantes au monde, selon
le classement de Forbes Magazine --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
Orange money lance l’épargne rémunérée à Madagascar ----------------------------------- 8
L’Internet à des prix abordables au Congo-Brazza : un chantier en cours ---------------- 9
Achieving a high-speed Africa --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10
IBM Boosts Africa Expansion With New Angola Office ----------------------------------------------- 15
How Phones Are Changing Healthcare In Africa ------------------------------------------------------ 16
Telcoms sector sees growth in review of spectrum charges -------------------------------------- 19
Africa trade bloc Comesa mulls regional infrastructure bond ----------------------------------- 20
Google launches drive to get more businesses in Africa’s most populous nation
online ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21
MTN Business launches 20 enterprise apps ---------------------------------------------------------------- 21
Telkom uncapped ADSL pricing revealed ----------------------------------------------------------------- 23
Etisalat Nigeria captures untapped mobile market--------------------------------------------------- 24
Innovation in mobile money distribution: TigoPesa’s roving agents --------------------------- 26
Next: Mobile Savings for the Unbanked -------------------------------------------------------------------- 27
Innovation in mobile money distribution: real-time electronic reporting on agent
performance ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28
Performances Veille
© 2011 Performances MC - www.performancesconsulting.com - Tous droits réservés
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Airtel Appoint New Product and Innovation Director for Africa Operations -------------- 29
Kenya: Press Releases: Kenya’s Cellulant to Run Mobile Applications for
Standard Chartered in Africa ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 29
Kenya: Press Releases: Airtel, Standard Chartered, MasterCard Roll out Virtual
Card on Mobile Phone ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30
Kenya: Press Releases: MTN Business Kenya gets ISO certification ----------------------------- 31
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Bouygues Telecom mise sur sa box unique pour
s'imposer dans la technologie
Encouragé par le succès de son offre d'accès fixe, le quatrième fournisseur d'accès à Internet a considérablement investi dans son futur boîtier, qui fait office de modem et de décodeur. France Télécom
travaille également sur une « one-box », à horizon plus lointain.
Ecrit par Solveig GODELUCK
Grisé par son succès dans l'Internet fixe, Bouygues Telecom veut pousser son avantage. Le groupe devrait lancer avant la fin de l'année un boîtier d'un nouveau genre, réunissant sous le même capot un
modem et un décodeur TV. Il le distribuera prioritairement à ses abonnés à la fibre optique.
Arrivé tardivement sur le marché du fixe, Bouygues Telecom, qui utilise le réseau câblé de Numericable/Completel, a réussi un excellent coup en inventant en mai 2009 le quadruple-play, c'est-à-dire
en mariant une box (Internet, TV, téléphonie fixe) et un abonnement mobile. Cette innovation marketing couplée à des tarifs agressifs lui ont permis de dépasser le million d'abonnés fixes, captant en un
peu plus de deux ans 5 % du marché.
Mais, jusqu'à présent, l'opérateur pariait sur sa performance commerciale plutôt que sur la technologie,
dont son concurrent Free s'est fait le grand spécialiste. L'arrivée de la première « OneBox » du marché
chez l'opérateur d'Issy-les-Moulineaux pourrait lui conférer un nouveau statut de firme technologique.
« Avec la OneBox, le groupe franchit à nos yeux une étape supplémentaire en montrant sa capacité à
innover, en se plaçant au même rang, voire devant, des concurrents qui ont fait de leur box un argument commercial », écrit l'analyste Benoît Maynard dans une étude Natixis.
Une alternative au CPL
Le groupe s'est donné les moyens humains de faire du neuf : au Technopole de Bouygues Telecom,
quelque 150 personnes planchent sur le projet initié à l'été 2010. Si elle n'inclut pas de lecteur Blu-Ray contrairement à la Freebox -, la nouvelle box sera plus performante que la meilleure box du marché
dans plusieurs domaines : un disque dur plus gros (350 Go au lieu de 250), la dernière génération de
processeur Intel (Groveland au lieu de Sodaville), 1 gigabit de mémoire RAM, et surtout une technologie Wifi très spécifique, que Bouygues Telecom est allé chercher en Israël. Développée par la société
Celeno, elle permet de relayer les flux TV sur une grande distance et constitue une alternative au CPL
(courant porteur en ligne) pour irriguer toute la maison avec une seule connexion Internet. Le groupe a
également travaillé sur le niveau de bruit et sur l'aspect visuel, sans recourir toutefois à une superstar du
design. Il n'a pas tranché entre le modèle de Free, qui consiste plutôt à mettre de la puissance de calcul et de stockage à la maison, et celui de SFR, tourné vers le « cloud ».
Avec cette box, Bouygues Telecom réalise un investissement stratégique à plusieurs titres. D'abord, le
groupe va pouvoir continuer à innover, car il est désormais maître de son logiciel, tout comme ses concurrents. Ses précédents fournisseurs, Technicolor et Sagem, ont accepté de lui vendre les briques servant à faire fonctionner sa box, assemblée par Samsung. Bouygues Telecom peut mettre à jour les
fonctionnalités et se préparer à l'éventualité d'une dématérialisation totale de la box, au cas où elle serait un jour avalée par le téléviseur et le réseau.
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Le petit dernier du haut débit prend du galon
Par ailleurs, grâce à cette box haut-de-gamme, Bouygues Telecom devrait pouvoir segmenter encore
davantage son offre fixe. C'est également ce que cherche à faire France Télécom, qui travaille sur une
box unique à l'horizon 2013. En attendant, l'opérateur historique se contentera d'une mise à jour de son
logiciel sur ses vieilles box (novembre 2009) avant Noël. Les clients de Bouygues Telecom souhaitant
profiter de tous les avantages de la fibre optique ont intérêt à choisir la box qui leur permet de regarder
simultanément quatre chaînes de télévision ou d'utiliser de nouveaux services dans le « cloud » (jeux vidéo, télésurveillance, etc.).
Bouygues Telecom va tenter d'en profiter pour améliorer son revenu moyen par client, qui plafonne actuellement à 32,5 euros par mois, soit nettement moins que pour ses concurrents. Et cela sans se ruiner,
explique Antoine Pradayrol d'Exane dans une note d'analyse : « La box devrait coûter 10 à 15 % de plus
que la génération précédente et ‘beaucoup moins‘ que la Freebox Revolution, qui coûte 300 euros l'impact sur le Capex (dépenses d'investissement) devrait donc être limité ». Le petit dernier du haut
débit a assurément pris du galon.
SOLVEIG GODELUCK
Après le rachat de TuNet, Tunisiana fait le premier
pas en direction d’une offre télécom globale
Le marché de l’Internet Haut Débit connaîtra au cours des prochaines semaines une nouvelle poussée
de fièvre avec l’arrivée du premier opérateur privé mobile -Tunisiana- sur le marché de la distribution
des connexions Internet (FSI). Avec l’acquisition de 49% de TuNet, Tunisiana devient actionnairegestionnaire de ce fournisseur d’accès Internet; sans compter qu’il dispose d’une option d’achat
(après autorisation de la tutelle) d’acquérir les 51% restants du capital de l’opérateur TuNet.
TuNet fait partie de la deuxième vague de licences accordées pour l’activité FSI, en compagnie de
TopNet et Hexabyte. La première vague de licences FSI avait été octroyée à Planet et à GlobalNet.Dans la bataille des parts de marché, en dépit d’une croissance poussive de l’offre Internet Haut
Débit, TopNet a pu, grâce à une stratégie de développement et une politique marketing dynamique
et agressive, devenir, en quelques années, le numéro 1 des FSI, suivi par Planet, GNet, Hexabyte et TuNet.
Avec le rachat de TopNet par Tunisie Télécom, l’intégration de Planet dans Orange Tunisie, le marché
de l’Internet fixe et mobile, surtout après la disparition, après la révolution du 14 janvier, des anciennes
règles du jeu, a complètement transformé le marché des services Internet. Ce changement de configuration du marché a obligé, mais également offert une opportunité à Tunisiana, d’intégrer cette activité de distribution de l’ADSL.
Les challenges de Dhia Ben Letaifa et son équipe, qui connaît bien le secteur pour avoir été »Deputy
General Manager/ CCO» chez Planet pendant plus de trois ans, est de réussir la transformation de TuNet (ce qui explique la condition du contrôle managérial exigé par Tunisiana) et à booster rapidement
ses parts de marché, en attendant l’arrivée de l’offre 3G de Tunisiana.
Avec cette opération, Tunisiana semble régler les dernières touches de son plan de développement
«Internet BroadBand», en attendant l’obtention de sa licence 3G, qui ne saurait tarder, selon les dernières confidences. Ce qui permettra à cet opérateur de boucler une offre globale –Mobile, 3G (avec
probablement une offre téléphonie «fixe» sur 3G) et Internet Fixe (ADSL- à travers le FSI TuNet).
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Pour la téléphonie fixe, les dirigeants de Tunisiana, lors de précédentes déclarations, avaient estimé
que ce n’était pas si stratégique que ça d’être ou de ne pas être sur ce segment de marché, ça évitera au moins à Tunisiana «d’aller creuser la terre pour poser des câbles» (dixit Yves Gauthier); mais les
choses pourraient changer dans l’avenir si les règles de l’exploitation des infrastructures de la téléphonie fixe changeaient.
M.G.S.
Le timbre à J + 2 « représentera les deux tiers des
volumes de courrier d'ici à trois à cinq ans »
Recueilli par Renaud HONORé
La « lettre verte » : c'est le nom choisi par La Poste pour le nouveau timbre à 57 centimes qui est lancé
samedi et est censé être plus écologique. Selon les syndicats, notamment SUD-PTT, les émissions de CO2
liées au transport du groupe public sont passées « de 300 millions de tonnes en 2004 à 515 millions en
2010 ».
La Poste lance un nouveau timbre, dans quel but ?
Nous avons mené une grande enquête auprès de 70.000 clients (entreprises et particuliers). Leurs attentes étaient très diversifiées : certains demandaient de la rapidité, d'autres de la fiabilité ou encore
de pouvoir poster plus tardivement, tout en étant le plus respectueux possible de l'environnement. Face
à cela, notre réponse est de passer d'un produit unique, la lettre à J + 1, à une véritable gamme. Nous
gardons notre timbre traditionnel à 60 centimes d'euros pour les envois arrivant le lendemain et lançons
ce nouveau timbre à 57 centimes qui répond à la fois à la demande de nos clients voulant payer moins
cher et à ceux plus intéressés par la fiabilité que par un service rapide. Cette nouvelle initiative s'accompagne du lancement d'une lettre en ligne, qu'on peut poster de partout dans le monde sur Internet jusqu'à 19 heures.
Pourquoi l'appeler « lettre verte » ?
Nous l'appelons ainsi car elle n'utilisera plus du tout l'avion (sauf pour la Corse et les DOM). Elle aura par
ailleurs un engagement de distribution, en régime de croisière, à 95 % le surlendemain, contre 85 % pour
le J + 1. Toutes nos nouvelles initiatives donnent plus de choix aux clients, améliorent les conditions de
travail des postiers et diminuent l'empreinte carbone de l'entreprise. Elles s'inscrivent dans la démarche
de développement responsable qui est au coeur de la stratégie de La Poste depuis mon arrivée à la
tête du groupe et qui est intégrée à nos modes de gouvernance. Il y a trente ans, la qualité était accusée de coûter cher à l'entreprise avant que l'on se rende compte que c'est la non-qualité qui coûtait
cher. Ma conviction, c'est qu'il en sera de même pour le développement responsable.
La distribution du courrier à J + 2 avait été rejetée par le gouvernement il y a deux ans. Qu'est-ce qui a
changé ?
Il ne s'agit plus du tout du même projet. Ce n'est plus un glissement du J + 1 au J + 2, c'est un élargissement de la gamme du service public. Il répond à une demande de nos clients, désireux notamment
d'une lettre plus respectueuse de l'environnement. Nous anticipons d'ailleurs que la « lettre verte » représentera les deux tiers des volumes de courrier d'ici à 3 à 5 ans.
Vous allez donc revoir toute votre organisation logistique ?
C'est probable. Si nos clients basculent assez largement vers la lettre verte, il y aura nécessairement
beaucoup moins d'avions utilisés. Notre dynamique a toujours été de regarder vers les modes de transPerformances Veille
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port les moins polluants. Cela peut nous amener à regarder la solution de trains rapides, pas nécessairement des TGV, d'ailleurs. Plus largement, pour l'acheminement et la distribution du courrier, nous développons un système vraiment cohérent, allant du choix des véhicules aux conditions d'utilisation,
avec notamment des stages d'écoconduite. Tous les vélos de nos facteurs seront bientôt à assistance
électrique. Les deux-roues motorisés traditionnels devraient aussi avoir disparu d'ici à 2015, remplacés
par des tricycles et des quads électriques. Enfin, nous sommes en pointe sur le dossier du véhicule électrique. Sur les 23.000 voitures qui seront commandées dans le cadre de l'appel d'offres commun regroupant des grandes entreprises publiques et privées, des collectivités locales et des administrations,
environ 10.000 seront achetées par La Poste. Leur déploiement sera progressif jusqu'en 2015. Notre souhait est que pour les villes qui verront arriver ces véhicules électriques, il y ait en parallèle une politique
urbaine plus respectueuse de l'environnement qui se mette en place. La logistique urbaine est un sujet
sur lequel nous pensons avoir des atouts. Par exemple, nous avons testé dans l'Essonne puis dans
quelques autres départements un service de collecte de papiers usagés auprès des entreprises que
nous souhaitons généraliser.
En quoi consiste ce nouveau service ?
Il s'agit d'optimiser le recyclage des papiers usagés des entreprises. Il faut savoir que 20 % seulement des
volumes sont traités, ceux des grandes entreprises et des collectivités par les sociétés de services à l'environnement. Reste les 80 % issus des TPE et PME, chez qui nos postiers vont tous les jours. Nous leur proposons de rapporter leurs vieux papiers en même temps que leurs courriers à poster. Le travail de tri et
de valorisation est ensuite assuré par une entreprise qui travaille avec des ateliers protégés. La généralisation sur toute la France est prévue pour le 1 er janvier 2012.
Les volumes de courrier distribués baissent moins vite que prévu. Est-ce que cela remet en
cause vos prévisions de chute de 30 % ?
Absolument pas. Les volumes de courrier continuent de décliner, à - 3 % plutôt qu'à - 4 %, mais la tendance structurelle reste à la baisse. La seule question, c'est de savoir si cette chute de 30 % interviendra
en 2015 ou en 2016., Au premier semestre 2011, la relative bonne santé de l'économie a ralenti cette
tendance. Mais il y a de grandes incertitudes sur la fin de l'année, 2012 et les années suivantes.
Quel bilan provisoire tirez-vous de votre offre de téléphonie mobile ?
Nous sommes très satisfaits : le volume d'activité est le double de celui envisagé au départ. D'ici à la fin
de l'année, notre réseau de distribution sera déjà le plus grand de France, avec 2.000 bureaux. Nous
sommes par ailleurs en train de tester notre offre de téléphonie dans des petits bureaux ruraux, avec
succès pour le moment. Cela nous conforte dans notre stratégie initiale. Tous nos concurrents se positionnent par rapport à l'Internet low cost. Notre créneau, c'est le contact et la relation de proximité. Si
bien que l'arrivée de Free ne nous inquiète pas outre mesure...
Afrique: Le Prix Orange de l'Entrepreneur social en
Afrique rejoint les prestigieux AfricaCom Awards
Le Prix de l'Entrepreneur social en Afrique, qui a été lancé par Orange en juin 2011, est intégré aux prestigieux AfricaCom Awards. La remise des prix aura lieu au Cap, en Afrique du Sud, le 9 novembre. Avec
ce prix, l'opérateur s'engage à soutenir activement des entrepreneurs jeunes et dynamiques et les startup dans les pays d'Afrique où il est présent. Le prix a pour but d'offrir un soutien aux entrepreneurs qui
ont des idées innovantes pour le développement social en utilisant les systèmes d'information et les
technologies des télécommunications, mais qui n'ont pas nécessairement les ressources techniques ou
financières pour mettre leurs idées en action.
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Après de nombreuses demandes de la part de candidats intéressés et afin de permettre aux entrepreneurs de finaliser leurs dossiers, la date limite pour la soumission des projets a été prolongée de deux
semaines. Les candidats sont invités à transmettre leurs dossiers sur www.starafrica.com avant le 30 septembre pour être éligible à ce prix.
Le Prix de l'Entrepreneur social en Afrique récompensera trois entrepreneurs ou start-up qui proposent
des solutions s'appuyant de façon innovante sur les TIC pour répondre aux besoins sociaux des populations du continent africain. L'éventail de projets peut recouvrir des services bancaires ou des applications dans des domaines essentiels comme la santé, l'éducation ou l'agriculture.
L'opérateur s'engage à soutenir financièrement et à mettre son expertise au service des lauréats du
concours. En plus d'une dotation allant de 10 000 à 25 000 euros, les trois gagnants du prix bénéficieront
d'un accompagnement de six mois.
Tout entrepreneur ou toute entité légale existant depuis juin 2008, sans restriction de nationalité, peut
participer gratuitement à ce prix. Les projets présentés doivent prévoir un déploiement de leur service
dans au moins un des 17 pays d'Afrique où il est implanté.
Le prix s'intègre aussi bien dans la stratégie d'innovation du groupe que dans sa politique de responsabilité sociale d'entreprise. En encourageant l'entrepreneuriat social, il souhaite souligner le rôle des TIC
dans le développement économique et social des pays émergents.
Source: La Presse
Maroc Telecom, parmi les 100 entreprises les plus
innovantes au monde, selon le classement de
Forbes Magazine
Maroc Telecom occupe la 88è place du classement de Forbes Magazine 2011 des entreprises les plus
innovantes dans le monde, juste après le géant américain Microsoft (86è) et devant Air Liquide, Toshiba
ou encore ABB.
Maroc Telecom est le seul opérateur de télécommunications à figurer dans ce classement.
Forbes effectue son classement selon un indice appelé "Innovation Premium" reposant à la fois sur la
tenue de la valeur sur le marché et sur une analyse qualitative des innovations annoncées par les entreprises testées.
Cet indice permet de mesurer à quel niveau les investisseurs ont fait monter le prix des actions d'une entreprise, fondant leurs attentes sur le potentiel de ses résultats positifs et d'innovation (nouveaux produits, services et marchés).
Sont ainsi pris en compte tant l'évolution des indices boursiers que la sortie de nouveaux produits ou services. Les membres de la liste doivent avoir 10 milliards de dollars de capitalisation boursière, dépenser
au moins 1 pc de leur actif en matière de R & D et avoir publié sept ans de données publiques.
La méthodologie de ce classement qui a été réalisée par Jeff Dyer, professeur de Stratégie à la Marriott
School (BYU) et Hal Gregersen, professeur de Leadership à l'INSEAD, avec Michael McConnell, directeur
de Recherche à HOLT (Crédit Suisse), a été inspirée du livre The Innovator's DNA (l'ADN de l'innovateur),
écrit par le professeur Christensen Clayton en partenariat avec la Harvard Business School.
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L'idée du classement Innovation Premium, repris par le magazine Forbes, a été développée sur la base
de l'analyse des données de Holt, une division du Crédit Suisse. Depuis plus de 25 ans, cette structure
propose aux investisseurs des analyses objectives sur plus de 20.000 entreprises à travers le monde, en
tenant compte de la structure de leur capital et des principaux moteurs de croissance de leur valeur.
Source: MAP
Orange money lance l’épargne rémunérée à
Madagascar
Emanant d'une technologie récente, les comptes épargnes, via téléphone mobile, ne généraient d'intérêts dans aucun pays du monde. Depuis hier, Orange money a initié la rémunération de ces dépôts,
à Madagascar.
La bancarisation est encore faible à Madagascar, par rapport à celle des autres pays. Néanmoins, la filière de la banque par téléphonie mobile connaît un essor considérable, ces derniers temps. L'utilisation
de cette technologie s'impose de plus en plus dans le pays.
Pas plus tard qu'hier, les dépôts placés par les utilisateurs d'Orange money sont rémunérés. Dans le secteur, il s'agit d'une grande première mondiale, car ce système de compte n'existe encore nulle part ailleurs. D'après les promoteurs du service, cette rémunération des dépôts n'est qu'un début, car de nouveaux services « Orange money » seront offerts dans les prochains jours.
Banques. L'utilisation de la banque mobile mène les usagers à l'accès aux services des banques. En effet, Orange Madagascar a collaboré avec des banquiers, dans le cadre de cette offre de compte
épargne rémunéré.
Les banques BMOI et Microcred Banque Madagascar sont les partenaires d'Orange money, a-t-on appris, lors d'une conférence de presse, qui s'est tenue hier à Andraharo. Malgré cela, les transferts effectués via Orange money sont gratuits, jusqu'à un montant de 500 000 Ariary, selon Gelebart Erwan, responsable de cette offre d'Orange Madagascar.
Mobilisation. Transactions rapides, simples et sécurisées, tels sont les avantages de la banque mobile, cités par les opérateurs en téléphonie mobile. Il faut croire que cette nouvelle technologie contribue à la
mobilisation de l'économie.
Plus de 500 000 Malgaches utilisent actuellement Orange money, qui n'a qu'un an d'existence. « Par
rapport aux autres, nos services sont rapides car nous avons 1 000 représentants à Madagascar où les
clients peuvent faire des dépôts et des retraits. 400 d'entre ces représentants sont à Antananarivo.
En outre, nous avons 1 500 commerçants qui acceptent les paiements par Orange money à Madagascar, dont 80% se trouvent à Antananarivo. De l'épicier de quartier au supermarché, cela est toujours
gratuit », a affirmé le manager d'Orange money.
Taux inégal. Par rapport à ceux des banques primaires, les caractéristiques de la rémunération des
épargnes d'Orange money connaissent quelques différences. En effet, l'utilisateur peut à tout moment
verser et retirer de l'argent sur son compte.
Les taux d'intérêts, par contre, varient de 4% à 6%. D'après les explications des promoteurs d'Orange
money, les dépôts de 1 à 100 000 Ariary sont rémunérés à 4% par an et les intérêts sont versés mensuellementc de 100 001 à 5 millions d'Ariary, ce taux monte à 5% et pour les dépôts supérieurs à 5 millions
d'Ariary, le taux d'intérêt est de 6% par an.
Source: Midi Madagasikara
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L’Internet à des prix abordables au Congo-Brazza :
un chantier en cours
Un certain nombre de pays le long de la côte ouest de l’Afrique auront bientôt accès pour la première
à de la capacité internationale via la fibre optique. C’est le cas du Congo qui sera sous peu connecté
au câble sous-marin de fibre optique WACS. Pour ce pays comme pour les autres pays africains accédant pour la première fois à de la capacité internationale fibre, les opportunités et les challenges sont
nombreux. Avec l’arrivée d’importantes capacités internationales, les internautes congolais sont en
droit d’espérer une baisse significative des prix des connexions Internet. Selon Isabelle Gross, cet objectif n’a de chance d’être réalisé que si les questions liées à la gestion et à l’accès à la capacité internationale sont résolues auparavant.
La Mauritanie, la Gambie, la Guinée Bissau, la Guinée-Conakry, le Sierra Leone, le Libéria, le Togo, Sao
Tomé et Principe, la Guinée Equatoriale, les deux Congos et la Namibie. Au total 12 pays africains le
long de la côte ouest auront bientôt et pour la première fois accès à de la capacité international via la
fibre. Le câble sous-marin ACE vient juste d’arriver en Gambie ou comme la photo ci-dessous le montre
l’enthousiasme et l’excitation ont été à la mesure de l’événement. L’arrivée de capacité internationale via la fibre n’est pas une petite chose pour ces 12 pays car elle leur permettra de s’arrimer aux réseaux fibre qui interconnectent la plupart des pays du monde et de poser la première pierre
d’achoppement vers la construction d’une économie numérique.
Alors que les opportunités sont bien là et palpables,
l’histoire du câble SAT3 a montré dans de nombreux cas
que la gestion de la capacité internationale par
l’opérateur historique a été un échec. A l’exception de la
Sonatel au Sénégal, de Côte d’Ivoire Télécom en Côte
d’Ivoire et plus récemment de Bénin Télécom au Bénin
qui a compris qu’écouler une partie du trafic voix et data
en provenance du Nigéria lui permettait d’augmenter les
revenus qu’il tire de la vente de capacité internationale
sur SAT3, nombreux ont été les opérateurs historiques qui
n’ont pas su tiré partie de cette opportunité. Parmi eux,
on peut citer la Camtel au Cameroun, Gabon Télécom
au Gabon ou encore Nitel au Nigéria. Leur gestion de la capacité internationale sur SAT3 s’est traduite
durant de nombreuses années par des prix par MB exorbitants (au-dessus de 5,000 dollars US par mois)
et une qualité de service douteuse. L’échec le plus flagrant a été avec Nitel au Nigéria. L’opérateur historique disposant d’un monopole d’accès à la capacité internationale sur SAT3 a non seulement pratiqué des prix très élevés mais aussi son service en terme de qualité n’a pas été à la hauteur des standards internationaux. C’est seulement par la suite grâce à la société Suburban Telecoms qui a tiré un
câble de fibre optique entre le Nigéria et le Bénin (avec connexion sur SAT3 à Cotonou) que les opérateurs télécoms du Nigéria ont pu acheté de la capacité internationale sur SAT3 à des prix plus raisonnables et avec une meilleure qualité de service à la clé.
Quelles sont les leçons à tirer de ces échecs de gestion de la capacité internationale fibre? Elles sont
de deux ordres:
- l’opérateur historique n’est pas nécessairement l’entité la plus à même pour gérer efficacement la
nouvelle capacité internationale qui va arriver
- la gestion sous forme de monopole de la capacité internationale encourage à maintenir des prix artificiellement élevés de la capacité internationale
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Pour en revenir au Congo, donner par exemple la gestion de la capacité internationale qui viendra
avec le câble WACS à Congo Télécom, l’opérateur historique, c’est la mort annoncée de toute
chance de voir un jour des services Internet à des prix abordables. Congo Télécom n’a ni les capacités
techniques ni le savoir faire commercial (la dette actuelle de la société est une bonne mesure de son
incompétence) nécessaires à une gestion efficace de la capacité internationale. Si l’objectif du gouvernement congolais est de saisir les opportunités offertes par l’arrivée de la capacité internationale en
particulier en termes de réductions potentielles des prix des services Internet, il lui faudra la volonté politique de prendre les décisions appropriées. Aujourd’hui les prix au détail des services Internet au Congo tournent toujours aux alentours de 50,000 francs CFA par mois (100 dollars US). C’est loin d’être à la
portée de tout le monde si l’on se réfère par exemple au salaire moyen des fonctionnaires qui est de
l’ordre de 80,000 à 100,000 francs CFA par mois (entre 160 et 200 dollars US par mois)
La situation est même pire au Congo RDC ou la Société Commerciale des Postes et des Télécommunications, la SCPT (ex-OCPT) est en charge de la construction de la station d’amérissage. Pas plus tard
que le 6 septembre dernier, le journal local le Potentiel rapportait que Mr Jean-pierre Muhongo,
l’Administrateur délégué général de la SCPT a été démis de ses fonctions et arrêté pour détournement
d’une partie des fonds (environ 3 millions de dollars US) alloués à la construction de la station
d’amérissage.
Sur le second point relatif à la gestion sous forme de monopole de la capacité internationale, les
exemples de prix exorbitants de commercialisation de la capacité internationale sur SAT3 abondent.
Aujourd’hui, quelles sont les options qui s’offrent aux gouvernements africains pour éviter des prix artificiellement élevés de la capacité internationale ? Dans des pays tel que le Nigéria qui aura bientôt accès à de la capacité internationale provenant de 5 câbles sous-marins différents (SAT3, Glo One, Main
One, WACS et ACE) le jeu de la concurrence entre les différents fournisseurs a fait baissé les prix et les
fera encore baissé dans l’avenir. A l’heure actuelle, le mégabit de capacité internationale se vend aux
alentours de 300 dollars. Dans la plupart des 12 pays le long de la cote ouest de l’Afrique qui vont accéder pour la première fois à de la capacité internationale par fibre, l’accès sera limité à un câble
sous-marin et par conséquent le principe de jeu de la concurrence ne s’appliquera pas. Le Congo est
dans cette situation avec un seul accès à de la capacité internationale (WACS). En revanche, nul
n’interdit à ce pays et ses gouvernants de mettre en place un modèle d’accès ouvert (open access)
garantissant un accès égal et non-discrimatoire à la capacité internationale tant sur le plan commercial que technique. Encore une fois, il s’agit de mettre en adéquation un objectif, favoriser l’accès à
l’Internet des congolais avec des décisions politiques (mettre en place le cadre réglementaire de
l’open access) supportant cet objectif.
Avec 5 câbles sous-marins qui seront tous prochainement en activité, la capacité internationale disponible le long de la cote ouest de l’Afrique se comptera en térabits (avec une offre supérieure à la demande actuelle).Il est donc peu probable qu’il ait d’autres projets de câble sous-marins dans les années à venir. Par conséquent il est important que ces 12 pays dont le Congo « ne ratent pas le train » en
terme d’utilisation plus la efficace que possible de la capacité internationale qui va bientôt s’offrir à
eux.
Achieving a high-speed Africa
Russell Southwood
Russell Southwood is the Chief Executive, Balancing Act, a consultancy and
online publishing company specialising in telecoms, Internet and broadcasting
in Africa. His consultancy work...
Closing the gap between the potential promise and current reality
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Africa’s long road to high-speed broadband is being made in leaps and bounds. Every week brings
news of another piece of the jigsaw fitting into place.
This week it’s the completion of the national fibre backbone in one of Africa’s larger markets. However,
there’s still remains a yawning gap between the promise of ubiquitous, cheap bandwidth and the current realities of the continent.
It’s hard not to be excited by the news that Angola (and its usually rather ponderous incumbent Angola
Telecom) have completed 10,000 kms of national fibre backbone that connects every province in the
country.
It is a huge place and suffers from an enormous range of practical difficulties. Nevertheless, it has completed the telecommunications equivalent of building a motorway network across the country.
In this same week, one of my analysts bought to my attention an infographic from Google on download speeds in Africa.
This claims to show the fastest download speeds in Africa, ranging from 10.1 Mbps in Ghana to 1.38
Mbps in Nigeria. It puts the world average download speed at 8.48 Mbps. The graphic is shown below:
African broadband download performance
The idea that Ghana has the best
download speeds in Africa will cause
a long, dry chuckle amongst my
Ghanaian colleagues followed by
them beating their head against the
wall slowly in frustration. If the average household download speed
achieved is 10.1 Mbps, I will (as a
non-hat wearer) duly eat my hat:
naturally, lightly sautéed with olive oil,
garlic and red onions.
At this point, I can hear the siren
voices saying: why does it matter?
Things are getting better. It matters
because if Africa is to do all the
things that the Internet and data
access promise, these have to happen at a speed that allow more or
less instantaneous access rather than
needing to make a cup of coffee
while you wait for something to download.
Demand for content and services is
being throttled by the inability of operators to deliver reasonably priced, fast (10 Mbps, I wish) and reliable bandwidth.
There is significant evidence that Africans (particularly young ones) want Facebook, You Tube and
other more local Internet services as much as any other group of citizens in the world. The key to them
being able to get them is delivery on that promise of fast, affordable bandwidth.
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The blockages are many and for those who follow these things, have a familiar ring to them:
International bandwidth access: By the end of 2012, nearly every coastal African country will have a
landing station. The only exception is likely to be Eritrea but its rulers take perhaps too greater pride in
being exceptional so there’s not much can be done there. There’s some doubts about the southern
reach of the ACE cable and others may join that list.
In some coastal countries, like Ghana and Nigeria, there will be 5 landing stations and international
bandwidth will sell in the lower hundreds of dollars per mbps. In many other countries, the World Bank
has encouraged nationally-led operator consortia to run the single landing station and this should ensure open access and reasonable prices. But there are a number of countries (notably Cameroon and
Gabon) where old-fashioned incumbents will sell a little of their huge fibre inventory at artificially high
prices. In other places like DRC where the Government insisted that the (almost non-existent) incumbent
be the licence-holder, the jury is out.
Pity the landlocked: There are 12 landlocked countries in Africa and as a number of studies have
shown, they suffer multiple disadvantages because they lack access to the sea. One of the most notable is that the transit price for getting their data to all these new international landing stations often
costs the same or more than it costs for their data to complete the journey from the landing station to
London or New York.
One of the continent’s major, powerful mobile players was telling us recently that it was impossible to
get to get reasonably priced transit bandwidth out of one of its West African landlocked country markets. This same operator is the cause of this problem in other territories rather than the victim of it.Right
hand, meet the left hand.
Considerable effort has gone into creating equitable open access to international landing stations but
rather less into tackling the problem for some of Africa’s more disadvantaged economies. WIOCC’s
East African Backbone reserves capacity at reasonable prices for landlocked members of its consortium. But there is nothing similar elsewhere in Africa and the cross-border expansion of Africa’s carriers’
carriers (like Phase3 Telecom, Suburban and KDN) has hit a plateau from a combination of capital and
licensing issues. Indeed, KDN is currently being sued by one of its suppliers in the Kenyan courts. A World
Bank scheme to use fibre deployed by the members of the West African Power Pool has disappeared
without trace.
National backbones – the problems come home to roost: If there is a problem with transit pricing, the
same issue is reflected at a national level. Bandwidth from Lagos to London is now down into the low
hundreds per Mbps and will undoubtedly go lower as more cables arrive. However, the considerably
shorter journey from Lagos to Abuja costs US$1,000- 1,200 per Mbps. Nigeria is one of the most competitive countries and has historically, led on the regulatory front, so why is this occurring?
There are many competitors but only two of them (MTN and Nitel) have genuinely national networks.
The long-standing problems with the incumbent Nitel and its multiple failed privatisations mean that
MTN comes close to being a de facto monopoly operator at this level.
Other countries have chosen to make building a fibre backbone of this sort a national priority but these
initiatives are not without issues. Uganda’s Chinese-built and financed backbone is widely acknowledged to have been over-costly and there are doubts about its operational effectiveness. In Tanzania, the
Government has made much play of separating out TTCL’s national fibre backbone (again Chinesebuilt but operating more effectively) within the company. But it has insisted that it can only sell a relatively high minimum amount of bandwidth to a limited group of operators and its pricing structure still
produces artificially high prices. Contrast this with Ghana’s National Communications Backbone company that offers a flat rate per Mbps across the whole country.
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There’s also a problem of investment displacement. Again take the example of Tanzania. The private
sector would have built 70-80% of the network that the Government took a loan from China to build. So
why didn’t it allow the private sector to build it (focusing on regulating price and access) and agree
that its (lesser) financial contribution would build those parts the market wouldn’t?
Mobile networks not fit for data purpose: The Irish are said to say:”If you want to go there, I wouldn’t
start from here.” In a little over ten years, Africa’s mobile operators have put up voice networks that cover anywhere between 30-80% of the continent’s population with voice coverage. In the last several
years, they have been steadily upgrading these networks to handle data with the seemingly endless
acronyms that promise high-speed data and only occasionally deliver it.
However, what started as a narrow pipe voice network with no IP elements is now creaking at the
seams as it seeks to go off and become an all-singing, all dancing data network. It’s like the streets of
Nairobi or Lagos or any other African city: the build up of traffic at different points during the day turns
the road into a car park where nothing moves.
One major mobile operator told us that in one of its larger country markets, rural data demand using
GPRS and EDGE was doubling in volume every six months. Already at this 2-2.5G level, data traffic exceeded voice traffic by 60/40 and on 3G, the proportions are 90/10. The same pattern is apparent
across all operators. The future is an IP-enabled data network that will carry the content and services
that will replace some of the voice revenues as ARPUs go down. For better or for worse, mobile operators are central to the process of delivering affordable data to the widest number of people. However,
they are currently struggling to transform what their networks can do in data terms with varying degrees
of success.
LTE for all – meet the future?:The mobile operators’ strongest card for continuing to be taken seriously in
terms of data delivery is LTE. The Kenyan Government decided that the quickest way to achieve this
(and it has a good track record on speed of movement, see TEAMS) was to put out a tender for an
open access, national network. In the absence of this, it may turn out that LTE and high-speed data delivery on it, will be the thing that further entrenches the market position of the new mobile incumbents.
In order to build an open access LTE network, you need access to the mobile operators tower network
and so the arm-wrestling begins. New incumbent Safaricom and old incumbent Telkom Kenya have the
power to negotiate a two week extension on the deadline. Since the winning bidder has to include an
operator with an extensive tower network (Safaricom?), it will be necessary to negotiate with them placing the towers into the hands of a trusted third party operator, like Eaton, Helios, American Towers or
another. The failure to get this kind of open access structure right will put most other operators at a disadvantage against those who can make the investment.
The alternative is deep-pocket investment in fibre (to the home, office and cabinet) of the kind being
carried out by insurgent challengers like 21st Century, Jamii Telecom and Wananchi. But the skew to
mobile use makes this a useful supplement rather than the central play. In this context, not enough African Governments have allowed their utilities to sell “dark fibre” as has happened in Uganda.
The strange case of technology as the game-changer: Another approach to breaking the back of this
affordable access everywhere problem has been the argument that certain technologies would be
“game-changers”. Over the last five years Wi-MAX has had much airplay for this tune. It made early
promises of both mobile data and voice but the latter was never delivered. Unfortunately, its base station technology even when it was working at its best was too expensive and had no customer device
ecology at the right price. On that score, Wi-Fi wipes the floor with Wi-MAX in terms of delivering bandwidth cheaply and reliably and has existing, cheap customer devices, not ones that will be ready “realsoon-now”.
The holy-grail in technology terms is a low-cost, IP-enabled base station that operates on small amounts
of satellite bandwidth to reach edge markets that need below an E1 of bandwidth. Thus far everyone
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has delivered things that produce incremental cost changes but not the step down in costs that is needed. It’s a complicated bundle to get right involving renewable power, footprint and satellite optimization. But this is the frontier that will begin to see changes in the core network over the next ten years if it
can be delivered. Why have an extremely cheap, IP-enabled base station at the edge of the network
and not start replacing existing, end-of-life equipment with it in the core network?
Ubiquitous Wi-Fi access – giving local access:One of the remaining blockages is that access at the local
level is fairly restricted. If you’re not a corporate customer paying premium prices, it’s difficult to get
cheap and reliable household bandwidth or to find its equivalent through public, Wi-Fi hot-spots.
At an early stage, some of Africa’s mobile operators (notably MTN) started experimenting with separating out their data traffic from their voice traffic at base station level. This practice is now widely described with the rather ugly phrase “Wi-Fi offload”.
As the number of smart and feature-rich handsets in Africa increases, customers will increasingly be encouraged by mobile operators – before the LTE nirvana arrives – to switch over to a Wi-Fi hot-spot or WiFi mesh network. Google has been experimenting with this approach in Nairobi’s The Junction shopping
mall and other operators are trialing a similar approaches.
As ever, the issue in competition terms is whoever entrenches themselves at this level could turn out to
be the price “gate-keeper.” For mobile operators, the recurring question remains: is this core to our business? Thus far they have defensively played every hand that looks threatening to them but the tide
may turn.
Fighting for the unconnected:There’s a lot of rhetoric around reaching the rural populations of Africa
but not a great deal of action. When one large operator tells us that 10% of its base stations are commercially marginal, the scale of the challenge is apparent. Yet there is a clear interest in the Internet in
rural areas shown by that stat quoted earlier of rural data use doubling and by national surveys carried
out in places like Kenya.
Many regulators in Africa have collected large amounts of money from operators but this has largely
stayed in their bank accounts because they have taken forever to set up universal service agency
(USA) functions or separate organisations.
Where they have spent the money, it has tended to go back to the “usual suspects” (incumbent and
mobile operators). In the main they have tended to extend their voice networks, leaving Internet/data
the poor relation. (the exceptions include places like Uganda). The argument against these structures is
that if you are relying on “the usual suspects” to do the work, it is an expensive financial structure that
strips out a significant percentage for overhead costs before returning the money to the same operators. Therefore why not simply write USA clauses into their licences that translate into the kinds of sums
being extracted?
But the issue is perhaps one that requires closer attention of a different kind. Government policy-makers
need to say to the operators, either you go to these areas or we will give licences and spectrum to
others who will do so on a local basis. This leads to three broad potential options:
1. The mobile operators (going the low cost base station route) do their own coverage in these areas
and the cost is deducted in whole or in part from their US obligations.
2. A independent, infrastructure sharing company offers operators the ability to connect to these areas
at an agreed price per minute. This was what Ericsson was promoting 2-3 years ago in Tanzania with optimised base stations that had larger coverage areas but very little has been heard of it recently.
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3. You set up independent, small-scale operators and they get an interconnection agreement that
might be asymmetrical to give them sufficient financial means to survive and again you could deduct
an initial “market-generating” subsidy from the US funding obligation.
It’s not the digital divide, it’s the electricity divide:It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mobile phone, a PC or
a TV, they all require electricity. So the real divide will increasingly be between those who have access
to reliable electricity to power these devices and those who don’t. There are two broad categories: firstly, those who already supposedly have access to electricity who would like reliable power that didn’t
go down regularly and spike in ways that damaged their devices; and secondly, those with no electricity or struggling with occasional power, largely but not exclusively in rural areas
For all the energy that goes into promoting universal access, not enough goes into addressing these
power problems. At a recent broadcast conference, one broadcaster was speaking optimistically
about the impact rural electrification would have on increasing TV audiences in Uganda. But for every
Uganda, there are two or three African countries where addressing electricity supply seems to be in stasis.
What is harder to understand is why the kind of power roll-outscheme that operators came together to
achieve in Uganda cannot be generalized across other countries? Also why are the infrastructure sharing companies not addressing power issues? Why can’t there be small-scale, local power providers?
You cannot separate out the achievement of a digital dividend from the provision of reliable power
supply. The two silos of communications and power are related.
The arrival of the international fibre cables has provided a warm glow of achievement to many of Africa’s politicians but unless they focus on the remaining problems outlined above, the promise will always
fall short of the potential.
Source: Balancingact-Africa
IBM Boosts Africa Expansion With New Angola Office
IBM Boosts Africa Expansion With New Angola Office
LUANDA, Angola, September 19, 2011/PRNewswire via African Press Organization (APO)/ — New subsidiary demonstrates company’s increased footprint key growth market
IBM (NYSE: IBM [http://www.ibm.com/investors ]) has announced the opening of a new branch office in
Luanda, as part of the company’s continued geographic expansion to increase its presence in key
growth markets in support of its global strategy.
The Angolan arm is part of a broad programme of investment that IBM is making in Africa and follows
the recent opening of new locations in Dakar, Senegal and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This gives IBM a direct presence in more than 20 African countries, including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.
The expanded presence in Angola will enable IBM to increase its level of service to clients and partners
across the Central African region and deliver more advanced and high-value solutions across many industries.
IBM already serves a number of key clients in Central Africa, spanning sectors including telecommunications, oil & gas, finance and government. For example in Angola, IBM is working with one of the
country’s major banks to help transform the institution’s core banking technology infrastructure and
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support business growth. With a new system based on IBM Power servers and software technologies, the
bank has been able to upgrade its banking services.
IBM is also working closely with other local financial institutions and oil & gas companies in Angola to
improve the accuracy and security of information in the country.
“Expanding into Angola offers IBM an important business opportunity as we expand our presence
throughout the African continent,” said Bruno Di Leo, General Manager, IBM Growth Markets. “This demonstrates IBM’s commitment to expand into new markets to provide innovative solutions for our clients
and partners. Luanda is one of more than 230 IBM branch offices across 55 growth market countries.”
IBM is also engaged in an active programme of corporate citizenship across Africa. Since 2008, IBM has
deployed 250 of its most talented employees on projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South
Africa, Morocco and Egypt helping to solve local problems with the aim of fostering economic development and job creation.
“By opening a direct presence in Angola and many other markets on the African continent, IBM overcomes one of the biggest barriers to entry in Africa, namely being able to offer local support and insights to their clients and business partners,” says Hannes Fourie, Senior Analyst IDC, Middle East and
Africa.
The Luanda office is part of IBM’s Central Africa operations and will complement IBM’s other branch offices in the region. IBM has supplied products and solutions to Central Africa since the 1940′s, and IBM
equipment was installed in Angola by the company known as Benguela Railways in 1955.
The new office was inaugurated this week at a ceremony for customers, business partners and government officials in Luanda.
About IBM
For more information on IBM, please visit:
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/06/ibm-in-africa.html
Contacts:
Arlene Wainstein - IBM External Relations, Middle East & Africa
+33(0)1-5875-5951 - Mobile: +33(0)672-759574 - [email protected]
Marie-Anne (Kui) Kinyanjui - IBM External Relations, Growth Markets Unit
+254-20-283-4000 - Mobile: +254-721-676-543 - [email protected]
Source: IBM
How Phones Are Changing Healthcare In Africa
by Zachary Sniderman 12
A slew of mobile initiatives are revolutionizing the way that healthcare is delivered in Africa and other
developing communities. While much has been made of the “mobile revolution” in North America,
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phones are even more important in developing communities where they are sometimes the only way
for people to share and receive information.
Health and healthcare have always been a huge concern in Africa, especially when doctors and hospitals can get isolated in remote areas where care is often most needed.
Mobile has been the answer in many cases. In 2010, mobile phones represented more than 90% of all
telephone lines in Africa with market penetration expected to pass 50% of the population. Some of the
continent’s most advanced markets have already hit nearly 100% penetration, according to Developing Telecoms. Mobile’s big and only getting bigger. Here we take a quick look at four mobile campaigns changing the way that doctors operate in Africa.
Praekelt Foundation
The Praekelt Foundation has a variety of products designed to promote mobile penetration and universal health in Africa. TxtAlert, for example, is a mobile tool that sends unique, automated SMS reminders
to patients on chronic medication. This reminds them to take their medication or perform other necessary tasks. A special tool, called “Please Call Me” allows patients to call their doctors even if they don’t
have any airtime available by pinging their doctor who then calls back.
Young Africa Live is a digital forum where African youths can share stories and get information about
HIV and AIDS. It also has helpful numbers and contact details for HIV- and AIDS-related organizations.
The goal is to destigmatize the diseases while also providing clear facts and support groups for African
youths. The portal also features live chats with doctors and relationship experts.
Health eVillages
The Robert F. Kennedy Center and Physicians Interactive launched Health eVillages (pronounced
“healthy villages”) to arm doctors in underserved regions with inexpensive phones and high-powered
diagnosis tools. The program will deliver those doctors and healthcare workers with new and refurbished
mobile devices preloaded with clinical decision support reference tools like drug guides, medical alerts,
journal summaries and references pulled from Skyscape, a medical reference app company.
Health eVillages has already run pilot programs in Haiti, Kenya, Uganda and the Greater Gulf Coast. It
will be rolling out in earnest in fall 2011. It estimates that there are more than 1 billion people worldwide
living in underserved areas and nearly one-third of countries are low on skilled healthcare workers. The
phones will not only reach new areas but hopefully improve the quality of care offered.
mHealth Alliance
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The mHealth Alliance is like the A-Team of mobile health initiatives. It draws together some of the largest
companies and organizations to further health in developing countries. Its founding members include
The UN Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Vodafone Foundation and U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the GSM Association and HP, among others.
Some of the alliance’s projects include SMS-based drug-counterfeit checker developed by HP, communications systems that connect patients to their doctors, send SMS alerts on the spread of local diseases, a SIMpill, a senso-equipped pill bottle that informs doctors if patients are actually taking their
meds, and creating local databases via mobile to improve on-the-ground care. The alliance staunchly
believes in open communication and is working to develop interoperable technology that any organization can use.
Medic Mobile
Medic Mobile is all about patient-to-doctor care. The SMS-based platform allows patients to get homebased care even if they can’t be physically visited by a caregiver. The organization launched a pilot
program in Malawi which, in six months, saved the clinical staff an estimated 1,200 hours follow-up time
and more than $3,000 in fuel and transportation costs. In addition, more than 100 patients received
treatment for TB after their symptoms were noticed by the community and reported by text message.
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Telcoms sector sees growth in review of spectrum
charges
The Communications Commission of Kenya is seeking to slash the fees it charges mobile service providers who will expand their services to rural areas. File
The telecommunications industry regulator is reviewing spectrum fees to reduce the financial burden for
operators expanding services to the under-served areas.
On Tuesday, acting Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) director-general Francis Wangusi told
the Business Daily that the issue had been brought before the CCK board for consideration.
“The review of spectrum fees is before the board and the outcome will be made public very soon. It’s
something that we are working on,” said Mr Wangusi.
The disclosure came soon after Global Service Mobile Association (GSMA) asked the government to review the fees. The association said the charges, together with the excise duty consumers pay on airtime, were major hurdles to the expansion of services by mobile phone firms. This has resulted in poor
access by low-income users as well as those in rural areas.
The commission charges spectrum fees based on the number of microwave links, radio transceivers and
spectrum the operators have in their network. This means that an operator with more links pays more.
Excise duty is 10 per cent of the value of airtime.
Major mobile phone service and infrastructure providers have been pushing for a review of the fees
since last year. They say the current formula is unfair, especially to firms that intend to install additional
communication masts.
Safaricom, for instance, pays more than Sh2.5 billion annually for its 40,000 telecoms links while Telkom
Kenya pays about Sh1 billion.
Operators want the levy to be based on use, meaning busier links pay more. These would ease the financial burden on the links that are not frequently used. A base station may have up to four links.
Gabriel Solomon, head of regulatory policy at GSMA, said there was need for the government to review the way spectrum fees are charged and reduce excise duty on airtime to increase the mobile penetration in the country.
“Despite the removal of value added tax (VAT) on handsets, tax still represents 20.5 per cent of the cost
of mobile ownership,” said Mr Gabriel. “Taxes on usage discourage mobile consumption among the
poor and rural users, preventing them from enjoying the benefits of mobile telephones.”
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He added that the review of the spectrum fees would also complement the 2009 removal of the 16 per
cent VAT on handsets. The move to abolish VAT increased the mobile phone penetration to 70 per cent
from the previous 50 per cent.
Compared to its neighbouring countries, Kenya charges less on usage tax but higher compared to
South Africa.
On a global basis, the World Bank published a study, which demonstrated that increasing 10 per cent
mobile-phone penetration increased the GDP per person by 0.8 per cent.
Benefits of increased mobile penetration include boosting productivity of individuals and businesses, including financial services such as remittances, empowerment of the poor and women and security.
Telkom Kenya said charging the frequency fee at the point of application hurts business.
“This drives operational costs very high. It is a contradiction that termination rates are lower while frequency fees remain unchanged,” said Telkom chief executive Mickael Ghossein.
The company’s revenue has fallen by 2.8 per cent to Sh10.2 billion despite growing its subscriber base
by 38.5 per cent to 1,056,000 in 2011.
Mr Ghossein said that a pay-as-you-use system supported by a refined calculation method would be
ideal, a proposal Airtel Kenya supported because it would lower fixed costs for operators.
With lower earnings and pressure to invest in supporting infrastructure, operators fear that the high fees
paid to an administrative body with no notable capital expenditure needs would stifle the sector’s
growth.
[email protected]
Africa
trade bloc
infrastructure bond
Comesa
mulls
regional
The African regional trade bloc Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) is considering issuing a regional infrastructure bond and is seeking advisers, a senior trade official said on Tuesday.
The trade blocs COMESA, Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African
Community (EAC) have embarked on aggressive infrastructure development to bolster their competitiveness, which investors say is hurt by problems such as poor roads and railways and unreliable power
supplies.
"The advisers will tell us how to raise the money, that is why we are recruiting them. We will probably
know by January," Sindiso Ngwenya, secretary general of Comesa, told Reuters after a news briefing.
Infrastructure development is a capital-intensive business that most African governments struggling with
large budget deficits cannot afford, making other regions more attractive to investors.
Members of major trading blocs in Africa plan to pitch multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects to development partners at a two-day regional conference in Nairobi to shore up financing support, a senior
trade official said on Tuesday.
Ngwenya attributed the high cost of trade in the region to logistics costs, with poor infrastructure accounting for as much as 60% of such spending.
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"Our expectation is that out of the $5.2-billion projects that are ready for financing, they (development
partners) will finance them," Ngwenya told Reuters.
Ngwenya added that there were more projects that still needed preparation before the trade bloc
seeks funding.
Most of the estimated 30 countries in the trading blocs are landlocked, forcing them to rely on countries
with ports like Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, incurring some of the highest costs in the world due to
congested ports and poor road and railway networks.
The World Bank 2011 Doing Business report said many landlocked economies face high inland transport
costs to reach ports incurring higher export and import costs than other regions.
Investors from the United States, Germany, China, among others will meet government officials and
members of the trading blocs in Nairobi on Wednesday, Ngwenya said.
Google launches drive to get more businesses in
Africa’s most populous nation online
By Associated Press
LAGOS, Nigeria — Google Inc. says it wants more businesses in Africa’s most populous nation to get online to grow local content for Nigeria’s more than 43 million Web users.
Google Nigeria Manager Juliet Ehimuan said in Lagos Tuesday that the “Get Nigerian Businesses Online”
campaign provides free tools, education and support for small and medium-size businesses to build
websites.
A workshop walked 70 participants through the process which starts by signing in with a Google account.
Marketing manager Affiong Osuchukwu said she hoped most of the participants would have a functional website within 90 minutes. However, the session was stretched out by slow Internet connection, one
of the many hurdles faced by some three million entrepreneurs also challenged by an epileptic power
supply and poor access to credit.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed.
MTN Business launches 20 enterprise apps
MTN Business has launched 20 enterprise applications focused on providing enterprises businesses information on tablets and smartphones.
Nomalanga Nkosi, MTN Business GM for Business Marketing
“It’s all the rage as smartphones and tablets become proliferated
and consumers look for personalised always on the go connectivity.
But what if we could turn the Apps market on its head – and rather
than focus on the consumerisation of such tools – use them to drive
business efficiencies and change the way we do business? That’s
exactly what we are doing,” said Nomalanga Nkosi, MTN Business
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GM for Business Marketing.
Today’s mobile workforce needs ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to corporate intranets and critical data
and applications and this is driving the growth of mobile enterprise applications. In fact, according to
Forrester 30% of enterprises are using app stores to deploy some of their applications at some level.
Global information technology company, Gartner has placed mobile applications and media tablets
within the top ten technologies to significantly impact businesses over the next three years. In developed markets, already 65% of workers use a tablet:
• 27% use a tablet for work;
• 36% to send and receive email;
• 35% to surf the internet;
• 12% to read newspapers, eBooks and magazines; and
• 7% to watch video content.
“We expect these international trends to soon be a local reality. The opportunity exists for local businesses to utilise these devices and platforms, not only to keep their workforce productive, but even to
increase their productivity,” adds Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), MTN
South Africa.
“For example, a national public services provider saves up to R50 000 per day on date entry labour
costs with one of MTN Business’s mobile enterprise app, while in the healthcare industry, preliminary solution testing has shown that health practitioners could increase daily productivity by as much as 5 300
hours with MTN Business’s Remote Medical Diagnostics enterprise application.”
Having started on the consumer side, applications are evolving, and fast moving into the enterprise
space. However, having generic “enterprise” apps on an App Store will not provide businesses with the
capabilities and opportunities that complex, tailor-made enterprise apps have to offer. Says Lambotharan.
“A lack of awareness about the availability of such applications and concerns about security and confidentiality, from the consumer legacy, are limiting their uptake, but today, through our seamless network and the significant investments that MTN has made in upgrading this network, we are demonstrating our commitment to growing a secure enterprise applications market, enhancing user experience
and enabling our customers to get the most out of these apps based on business demands and efficiency needs.”
MTN Business’s range of Enterprise Apps includes:
• Remote medical diagnostics
• Device security and call recording
• Device backup and sync
• Asset Tracking
• Transport and Logistics
• Mobile Surveys
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• Mobile Learning
• Cost and expense management
• Cloud Storage
“Through real time applications that drive business efficiencies and deliver to the market the ability to
connect on an innovative platform – specific to the business sector – there is no doubt that the uptake
of these enterprise applications will continue to increase and that businesses will start seeing the larger
benefits and competitive market opportunities that can be derived going forward,” concludes Nkosi.
Staff Writer
Telkom uncapped ADSL pricing revealed
Jan Vermeulen
Jan Vermeulen is a technology journalist and web developer at MyBroadband. After receiving a Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria he worked at...
TelkomInternet is selling Do Broadband packages to rAge attendees standing in line outside the Coca
Cola Dome in Johannesburg
Summary: TelkomInternet is launching at least three uncapped ADSL accounts today: “up to 384kbps”
for R219 per month, 1Mbps for R369, and a promotional bundle exclusive to the rAge expo for R782 that
includes “up to 10Mbps” line rental and Battlefield 3.
TelkomInternet is selling their new uncapped ADSL accounts at the rAge gaming expo being held this
weekend (30 September to 2 October 2011).
The Telkom uncapped account sales confirm speculation from yesterday that Telkom would be introducing consumer uncapped ADSL today.
It looks like Telkom will be launching at least three new packages today, two of which will be permanent products running on 384kbps and 1Mbps lines, and a third promotional package for “up to
10Mbps” ADSL that will only be available at rAge.
Telkom’s “do Uncapped” accounts will be throttled during the day between 06h00 and 22h00 to a certain fraction of the maximum linespeed, but there is no restriction on local traffic.
There is no mention of throttling on the “do Gamers bundle for rAge” promo.
The do Gamers bundle, available only at rAge this weekend, costs R782 per month and includes line
rental for Telkom’s fastest ADSL offering (“up to 10Mbps”), a copy of Battlefield 3 (when it launches),
and a 2TB external hard drive.
You are required to sign a 12 month contract for the Do Gamers bundle.
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Telkom Uncapped ADSL Product Sheet
Sales reps were not on hand to confirm whether the 1024Mbps option listed on the sign-up sheet for
R369 included the ADSL rental, or whether voice line rental is included in the do Gamers bundle.
The details of the new TelkomInternet do Uncapped accounts are as follows:
Do Uncapped 384kbps – R219; daytime restriction (06h00 to 22h00) to 354kbps
Do Uncapped 1Mbps – R369; daytime restriction (06h00 to 22h00) to 767kbps
Package pricing excludes landline and ADSL rental.
Telkom’s 384kbps uncapped account is priced exactly the same as Mweb’s, but its 1Mbps account is
somewhat more expensive (Mweb’s costs R299 per month).
It also remains to be seen whether Telkom will introduce a permanent 4Mbps and 10Mbps uncapped
offering. The absence of high end uncapped packages show that Telkom remains cautious about uncapped broadband.
Thanks to MyBroadband freelancer Gerrit Vermeulen and Let’s Talk Network for doing the legwork on
this one.
Etisalat Nigeria captures untapped mobile market
Etisalat Nigeria is evading the current mobile price war by embracing new innovative ideas in order to
capture the vast Nigerian mobile market.
Etisalat Nigeria is focusing on innovative ideas to capture
Nigeria's mobile market (image source: file photo)
That’s according to John Murray, Etisalat Nigeria Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Etisalat Nigeria is currently competing with other mobile operators including MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria and Glo.
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“The market is still growing. Customer demographics are difficult to measure because the average revenue spend is low. The operating costs to do business in Nigeria are high due to the weak or nonexistent infrastructure,” said Murray.
“As a new entrant into the mobile market, we’re competing against companies that have been in the
market for about 8 to 10 years longer than us,” said Murray.
“We’ve had to be real innovative and creative on how we bring something new into the market. We
really don’t want to compete on price considering that the prices are already too low. We compete on
innovation and service quality.
Nigeria’s mobile market
“Etisalat is a late entrant in the Nigerian mobile market and currently ranks in the 4th position with about
10 million mobile subscribers,” said Murray.
Murray said Etisalat Group operates in Africa, Middle East and Asia. The company is broken into 3 ‘clusters’. The African cluster includes Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, plus a cluster of 7 West African French speaking countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali, Benin and Togo.
“Nigeria is definitely the biggest African mobile operation for Etisalat,” said Murray.
How can business people be successful in Africa’s mobile market?
“You need 3 key components to be successful in the African marketplace. You need a shareholder
component, you need strategic partnerships with very capable providers and you need to be able to
energise the indigenous people,” said Murray.
“The Nigerians need to feel that they’re part of the success and feel that it’s also their business,”said
Murray.
“Nigeria is not an easy market, it’s a very high risk market,” confirms Murray.
What are your personal sentiments regarding Asian companies that are investing aggressively
across the African continent?
That’s a great question. I have a lot of respect for the Chinese people that have come into Africa. The
reason I respect them is they’re putting large capital at risk. When the Chinese come in, they work directly with the average African.
You find them on the streets, eating, conducting business and shopping with the average African. Most
expats tend to live in a bubble, separated from the African experience. The Chinese are integrated into
the Nigerian communities.
“Africa is fascinating; it’s really the cutting edge business industry. There’s enthusiasm and the willingness
to take a risk and try new things. The rate at which adaptation is coming is so quick, you just see things
change on a month to month basis,” concludes Murray.
Bontle Moeng
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Innovation in mobile money distribution: TigoPesa’s
roving agents
By Neil Davidson
As I discussed in a recent blog post, what makes the economics of
mobile money so different from the economics of traditional banking
is the reduction in costs for cash in, cash out, and transaction processing. The lower these costs are, the lower fees for customers can be—
making financial services affordable in a way that they never have
been before.
The use of independent retail agents is what, in the first wave of mobile money, has dramatically reduced the cost of cash-in and cashout compared to doing so in bank branches. Recently, TigoPesa in
Tanzania has taken this one step further. They have begun to appoint roving agents, who aren’t confined to a single retail shop but who can, as the name implies, perform cash-in and cash-out transactions
anywhere. They carry a handset with a merchant SIM that is loaded with e- float and cash, and they
wear eye-catching aprons which distinguish them from the more common roving airtime resellers.
This is great for customers. Roving agents make “doorstep service” possible—serving customers where
they live and work, rather than making them find the nearest retail agent. This makes it more convenient
for customers to use the service. In Indonesia, several banks have introduced “smiling ATMs,” bank employees who are armed with a mobile POS device and who can process deposits and withdrawals. This
level of service may also make it more likely that customers will take advantage of the ability to store
value in their account as a simple way to save. Ghana is famous for its susu collectors, who visit clients
regularly (typically daily) at their home or business to collect small amounts to save. Roving agents can
allow customers to build up the same habit with mobile money.
Roving agents can make a meaningful difference to the business case, too. Roving agents will have a
lower cost structure than retail agents. There’s no rent or other overheads to pay; instead, the roving
agent just needs to earn a decent wage. If they are able to perform as many or more transactions as a
retail agent, then significant cost savings are possible without eroding the agent’s value proposition.
One possible implication of this is that roving agents may someday be able to facilitate very small value
cash-in and cash-out transactions that are uneconomical at retail agents.
Why don’t we see roving agents in more markets? One reason is that regulators are concerned about
their reliability. But because mobile money services post transactions in real time and require agents to
trade on their own account, cashing in or cashing out with a roving agent is really no less safe than
buying a physical good (like batteries or an airtime scratch card) from a roving salesman. Roving
agents may be at greater risk of theft than retail agents, and operators may choose to limit the amount
of float that they can carry in cash. But since that cash belongs to the roving agent, he has every incentive to make prudent decisions for himself about how much to carry.
Tigo has been pushing the innovation frontier outside of Tanzania, too: you can download MMU’s recent case study about Giros Tigo in Paraguay here.
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Next: Mobile Savings for the Unbanked
By Ignacio Mas
The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Ignacio Mas, consultant associated with Bankable Frontier mobile money providers are
increasingly pondering the path from payments to savings. If people
were comfortable keeping higher e-money balances it would likely increase the activity rate on mobile money transfers, as well as reduce the
proportion of transfers that are converted back into cash – a costly step.
Let me start with three points, which might help orient the development of suitable savings propositions
on mobile money platforms.
Point 1: At the heart of any savings discussion ought to be the question: saving for what? Tough question, when you are poor and have a range of planned expenditures and contingencies you’d like to
fund (school fees, home improvements, bicycle, buffer against health emergencies), but you’d also
quite like to reward yourself today.
Point 2: To build up savings discipline, people have a tendency to ritualize their savings behaviors: the
allocation of moneys to envelopes, the hoarding of jewelry as a prized family possession, the attendance of weekly savings group meetings.
Point 3: People’s emphasis regarding savings is on consumption possibilities rather than time periods.
Economists and bankers think of goals in terms of time periods; people think in terms of products and
activities.
What are the implications for aspiring providers of mobile savings services? Savings tools should begin
by helping people triage across a range of savings purposes (thanks to Kim Wilson for this nice term).
Savings needs to be conceived as an experience, not just as a set of receptacles for funds. And each
savings receptacle needs to be directly related to specific goals in customers’ minds.
Doing all this through a mobile phone is a challenge and an opportunity. A challenge, because the
kinds of phones that poor people have in developing countries do not present rich user interface options. And an opportunity, because the personal, always-with-you, connected nature of the phone can
be used to conceive savings services as a conversation between the client and the provider.
In a recent paper with Colin Mayer, we describe how savings goals can be defined and managed as a
system of deferred payments (committed today but paid tomorrow). This means that a whole savings
edifice can be constructed merely by adding a couple of optional fields in a standard mobile money
transfer user interface: what is the value date for the transaction (default: immediate), and what is the
purpose (an alphanumeric field or selectable from a standard list of options).
This allows customers to earmark money they receive today to (for instance) send it home when the
rent is due, construct their own sequence of installments to buy a bicycle, or establish a commitment
savings pattern to create their buffer against medical emergencies (deferred payments to self).
All these deferred payments would in effect constitute a system of sub-accounts, allowing a very personalized way for customers to view and use their account, but all would operate from the single customer mobile money account. Moreover, imagine the possibilities for credit scoring if the provider knew
what a customer’s goals were, how intensively they used the commitment payment/savings feature,
and how regularly they contributed to these.
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Because savings is mainly delayed expenditures, the savings service experience is a logical extension of
the payments experience. Savings are about adding a time dimension to basic money transfers. Presenting savings opportunities as deferred payments has the advantage of reminding people more directly of why they are saving at all.
Innovation in mobile money distribution: real-time
electronic reporting on agent performance
By Neil Davidson
mobile money platforms that rely on networks of cash-in/cash-out agents to take in
and pay out cash need that network to be healthy in order to offer customers a
compelling value proposition. The lynchpin of channel health is liquidity, but compliance with customer-due-diligence standards, merchandising standards, and so
on are also important. A key success factor in ensuring channel health is monitoring:
routine personal visits by representatives of the mobile money service provider to
agent locations are the only way to assess to what extent agents are adhering to
their obligations and offering customers a quality retail experience.
But collecting these reports, consolidating the data, summarizing the results in a way that is insightful
and actionable (including a system for flagging problems until they are resolved) is a challenge. That’s
why I was impressed by a new tool that’s recently been rolled out to the trade development representatives (TDRs) employed by MTN to support the MobileMoney agent network in Uganda. Each TDR carries an inexpensive Android handset with an application installed that replaces a paper checklist (such
as the ones that TDRs employed by Top Image in Kenya use when visiting M-PESA agents for Safaricom).
The TDR can quickly complete the electronic form while at the agent shop. Not only do TDRs use the
form to report on an agents’ performance; they can also highlight issues which need attention but
which they cannot resolve on the spot, such as “agent re-training required.”
When they’ve finished filling out the form and the TDR hits submit, the report is uploaded electronically
and a database, which contains every report on every agent outlet, is updated. In this case, that database is hosted by Salesforce.com, which makes it easy to manipulate the data and create reports
that are useful to management; a list of agents who require re-training, for example, could be forwarded to the point person for scheduling attendance at training sessions.
This system not only provides management with better visibility into the workings of its agent network; it
also provides better visibility into productivity of its field representatives. Reports from agent shops are
geo-tagged, making it significantly more difficult for a TDR to, say, file reports on agents he hasn’t actually visited.
This system was created for MTN by AppLab, an initiative of the Grameen Foundation. Their team has
calculated that the cost of deploying these handsets pays for itself in seven months. How? The time that
TDRs would otherwise spend doing manual data entry and data collation if they were using a paperbased system can now be spent focused on what’s most important: monitoring, and improving, agent
performance.
At a recent MMU Working Group, the CEO of Top Image in Kenya described the importance of agent
monitoring. Examples of checklists that several agent-mediated financial services use around the world
to track the performance of their agents can be found in the appendices of CGAP’s Agent Management Toolkit.
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Airtel Appoint New Product and Innovation Director
for Africa Operations
Nairobi, 15 September 2011 --- As part of its drive to deliver relevant and innovative mobile solutions in
Africa, Bharti Airtel has announced the appointment of Willie Ellis as the Product and Innovation Director
for Africa. Willie Ellis brings over 16 years of experience in telecommunications. Most recently, Willie was
the Managing Executive responsible for New Product Development in Vodacom South Africa.
Kenya: Press Releases: Kenya’s Cellulant to Run
Mobile Applications for Standard Chartered in Africa
Nairobi, 22 September 2011 --- Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, the first bank in its global network and
among the first globally to launch mobile banking on USSD platform in partnership with Cellulant three
years ago, is looking to be the first to rollout a mobile commerce ecosystem network for its customers.
Cellulant, who power mobile banking for more than 32 banks in Africa, operate Africa’s leading mobile
commerce network enabling over KES10bn in transaction value last year.
With the new deal, Cellulant will deploy its new mobile commerce platform dubbed Release 3.0, a mobile commerce platform that enables banking, merchant services, digital services, bulk payments and
agency banking via applications on android, ios (Apple) and other channels access such as USSD, SMS
and Java applications.
Standard Chartered Kenya’s Consumer Banking Director Kariuki Ngari says that this investment has already seen them double the active base of M-banking users over the second quarter winning the bank
an award within its global network. He adds that the bank is eager to see its customers adopt the new
platform as it plans to roll out new services on its alternative channels.
Cellulant have been powering mobile banking for Standard Chartered Bank for about three years
across five countries in Africa (Ghana, Zambia, Botswana, Nigeria and Kenya) and is looking to rolling
this across all Standard Chartered Bank markets in Africa, enabling the bank’s customers across the
continent to enjoy mobile banking, merchant payments, web payments, digital content and agency
banking on their phones.
Standard Chartered Bank’s decision to upgrade to Cellulant’s new mobile commerce platform, Ngari
explained, is also based on the platform robustness which allows the bank to tailor make different products for various markets across Africa.
This new software iteration is a highly robust technical platform that integrates to different core banking
systems with security features on encryption, monitoring and channel management business tools. The
platform also aggregates banks channels such as ATM and internet banking to enhance customer’s
user experience and enable services such as card less withdrawals, secure PIN management, SMS alerts
on mobile for ATM, bill presentment and payment.
According to Cellulant’s Chief Business Officer, Mr. Paul Ndichu, the firm invests 15% of its annual revenues from all its markets in research and development to drive product enhancement and new mobile
commerce platforms that enables value chains.
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Standard Chartered Bank has been aggressive in the mobile space deploying its own application store
with Apple (iPhone and iPad) for its customers and employees, with applications such as BREEZE, FX
RATES, Straight-to-Bank and Trade port.
“The bank’s aim is to more than triple mobile commerce usage as an alternative delivery channel for
our range of services as part of our strategic commitment to meet our discerning customers’ needs
more conveniently,” Ngari said. “Cellulant has managed to meet our international demands to provide
a technically superior, robust and scalable solution and we are proud to continue this journey with
them.”
Cellulant drives mobile commerce in 10 countries, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Mauritius, Rwanda,
Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi and now Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and is one of the first
companies to be issued with the mobile payments license in Nigeria. In Africa, Cellulant enables mobiles commerce over 30 mobile networks for different industries including banking, insurance, music, utilities, retail and manufacturing.
“We have built a mobile commerce network that is connected to different platforms across different
value chains in Africa such as MNO wallets, banks, merchant bill payment gateways and content delivery channels to deliver a transformational experience on mobile,” Ndichu explained.
Kenya: Press Releases: Airtel, Standard Chartered,
MasterCard Roll out Virtual Card on Mobile Phone
Nairobi, 14 September 2011 --- Airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard Worldwide have
today announced the commercial launch of the world’s first virtual card that operates off a mobile wallet linked to Airtel’s mobile commerce offering – Airtel money. While initially launched in Kenya, this product will soon be available across Africa.
The groundbreaking mobile commerce product known as ‘PayOnline’ will give consumers across the
continent greater financial inclusivity in the global e-commerce sector. Registered Airtel customers will
be able to make online purchases from any site where MasterCard is accepted. The single use shopping card will be initially available in Kenya for purchases made from non-Kenyan websites. The second
phase of the program will see the rollout of the online product across Airtel markets.
The tripartite partnership signals the growing realizations by players in the e-commerce sector of the expected growth in mobile payments and contactless card payments in the next decade. Airtel’s consumer penetration in Africa backed by the financial structuring and regulatory framework expertise by
Standard Chartered Bank combined with the global acceptance of MasterCard will provide the consumer with a compelling product that is fast, secure and convenient.
The one-time basis of the product has provided the consumer with a simple but secure payment
process bereft of complex reconciliation and integration processes associated with other online transactions. The simplified online transaction will follow the process; Airtel Customers will be able to request
a one-time virtual card number with the amount of purchase. Airtel money services platform will generate a special 16 digit number that enables the completion of the transaction. On completion of the
transaction, a confirmation message will be sent to the consumer’s handset.
Speakers at a launch ceremony held in Nairobi, Kenya, were unanimous in their analysis of the power of
the mobile phone in leading and forging customer relationships through innovative payment solutions in
alliance with banking partners.
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N Arjun, Chief Projects and Transformation Officer, Airtel Africa, commented: “The sustained socioeconomic changes witnessed in Africa over the last decade have shown that the continent has the
ability to leapfrog conventional systems and embrace innovations on platforms such as the mobile
phone. At Airtel Africa, we believe the delivery of innovative and relevant solutions that tackle consumer’s daily challenges play an important role in bolstering a country’s economy through communication and mobile commerce. The launch of Airtel Money and subsequent offers under service payments,
money transfer, top ups and mobile banking is proof of our commitment in converting innovations into
sustainable economic development”.
Daniel Monehin, MasterCard’s Area Head for East & West Africa and Indian Ocean Islands, MasterCard
Worldwide, said: "The connected world is shrinking at a rapid pace as people turn to mobile phones to
connect with friends and make purchases on-the-go. We saw that people want more options in making
their payments easier and more convenient which is why we joined hands with Airtel and Standard
Chartered Bank to help make people's lives easier with this innovative new product. Financially empowering the citizens of Kenya is a rewarding experience, not only for consumers themselves, but for the
various institutions and merchants that are involved in doing so. MasterCard looks forward to working
with Standard Charted Bank and airtel to continue promoting the advantages of electronic payments
and to accelerate the displacement of cash and cheques in Kenya.”
Commenting on Standard Chartered’s behalf, Kariuki Ngari, Executive Director Kenya, and Cluster
Head, East Africa Consumer Banking, said: “As a leading international bank in Africa, we are always
looking for ways to bring innovative financial solutions to our customers in line with our brand promise:
Here for good. We have been in Kenya for 100 years and have always been at the forefront of introducing new products and services to the market. The PayOnline solution is a unique way of ensuring that
our customers can transact in the digital world for the first time without having to have a credit card or
use their physical debit card.
Airtel PayOnline, will enable more Kenyan consumers to connect to the global marketplace via their
mobile phones no matter where they are in the world,”.
The global opportunity for mobile payments is growing. According IE Market Research Corporation the
global mobile purchases will reach $ 224.4 Billion by 2014. In the latest IEMR global mobile payment forecast, the research firm opines that that merchandise purchase growth will closely track overall growth
in mobile payments globally.
The PayOnline solution is compatible with all mobile phones and operating systems via a configured
update from Airtel customer service. Equally, the three partners have instituted a raft of security controls
to ensure probity and secure transactions.
Kenya: Press Releases: MTN Business Kenya gets ISO
certification
Nairobi, 14 September 2011 --- MTN Business has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 certification for maintaining excellent business operations and efficient management. The award comes on the back of the recent launch by the company of its Internet Protocol (IP) private automatic branch exchange (PABX), a
software-based telephone exchange service that is set to take on the traditional private branch exchange (PBX) in business environments.
The certificate was issued by DQS of Germany and will be valid for three years. “However, there will be
internal reviews every three months and external reviews after every six months,” said Managing Director Tom Omariba. MTN Business embarked on ISO 9001:2008 audit process in April, with the excersise
being completed in June 2011.
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MTN Business is the first ICT firm in Kenya to receive the ISO 9001:2008 certification. The firm’s Marketing
Manager, Tom Nyongesa said ISO certification is increasingly becoming a tender requirement for certain goverment and parastatal business. Mr. Nyongesa said the certification will enable MTN Business
keep up with Kenya’s fast-paced Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector.
A business firm certified by an ISO 9001 registrar is perceived as a firm that is devoted to giving its best to
provide customer satisfaction. Moreover, it also gives the impression that the firm wants to achieve better efficiency. “Such a strong-willed image is an admirable trait that most organisations and customers
look for in a potential business partner,” said Mr. Omariba
The main function of ISO 9001 is to help businesses manage their operational management. With good
management, a company can increase both the quality and quantity of output without having to
spend extra. This is achieved by enforcing careful monitoring and control of business-related functions.
ISO 9001 can be used by any kind of business, regardless of its size and location.
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