London-based company ForgetMeNot Africa wants to take services such as e-mail, instant messaging and social media to basic cellphones to increase African connectivity and digital engagement. Perhaps most appealing is that its offerings work on any phone that can send and receive SMS messages.

The company’s main product is called Message Optimiser. ForgetMeNot chief operating officer Jeremy George says Message Optimiser converts Internet communications into a format that can be used on non-smartphones.

The product connects into an operator’s message centre and then creates a range of numbers for different services. Messages sent to those numbers are routed to ForgetMeNot Africa’s servers, and these are then routed to an e-mail address, to Facebook chat or to other services.

“We want to make it intuitive for users by giving them a number for each endpoint, so they could have a particular e-mail address saved as a number,” says George. “When the link is created between the subscriber’s phone and the endpoint, we allocate a number to it and SMS that information to the user for future reference.”

The service can be used for Facebook, various instant messaging services and even dating sites. The choice of which platforms and services are supported lies with the operator.

“We white-label our service so it will be network-branded,” George adds. “For example, Globacom in Nigeria call it Glomessenger. In Kenya, we’ve integrated with Safaricom Mail, which is an existing service.”

Operators in Zimbabwe, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria, Kenya and Lesotho have already begun offering Message Optimiser services, and George says the company is running trials in half a dozen other African countries. He says talks are also underway with SA operators but he can’t talk about this until the discussions are finalised.

ForgetMeNot Africa also offers a Java application built on the Message Optimiser backbone that provides Java-enabled handsets with a smartphone-like application. George says it’s the Message Optimiser backend with a “sexier front-end”.

Because SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, the service concatenates messages to create ones up to 480 characters long. If a message is longer than that, for example a lengthy e-mail, at the end of each 480-character block of text the user can reply “more” and received the next increment.

George says it is important that carriers realise this isn’t a premium service and that uptake requires it not be billed as such. He says that in Zimbabwe, while a standard SMS costs in the region of US$0,08, the service costs $0,02.

Other markets, like Nigeria, offer subscription services. “In Nigeria, Globacom has an offer where you can get 15 days unlimited messaging for 60 naira, which is about $0,25.”

The service also has potential for enterprise use. George says it’s ideally suited to small companies with drivers or field workers who can all be assigned a number/e-mail address. An office can send a driver a message via e-mail and they can reply via their phone.

George says the opportunity exists to create something more refined that could potentially support a workforce of thousands. To this end, the company is developing an application programming interface (API) so developers can create software for the platform. Developers will get a cut of any sales.

“The API should be done by January,” George says. “We will have a site where people can create applications using this two-way permanent number reservation SMS technology.”

One of the perks of the service, according to George, is that users can try it without making any long-term commitments. “In Africa, you can buy sweets and cigarettes individually, and we want people to be able to think of e-mail the same way.” — Craig Wilson, TechCentral