Kenya’s biggest mobile operator, Safaricom, has said it will stop selling feature phones in its own retail stores in an effort to increase smartphone penetration and bolster the East African country’s digital content market. Corporate affairs director Nzioka Waita made the surprising announcement at the Mobile Web East Africa conference
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Despite a warning by the Communications Commission of Kenya that it would not extend the 31 December 2012 deadline for operators to disconnect mobile subscribers who haven’t registered their Sim cards, unregistered users continued to enjoy access to services on Thursday, three days after the deadline
Ghana’s National Communications Authority has ordered MTN, that country’s largest mobile operator, to stop adding new subscribers to its network because network quality “continues to deteriorate”. MTN Ghana has 11m subscribers in a country of 25m people, according
United Nations agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has ranked Zimbabwe second in the “most dynamic country” category of its latest measurements of ICT development. This development is measured using the ITU’s ICT Development Index
M-Pesa, which has more than 14m subscribers in Kenya, could be forced to increase transaction costs by 10% as East African nation’s treasury looks to impose a levy on transactions made using the mobile money transfer service. Though Kenya’s treasury says it expects mobile
The Kenyan government is ditching proprietary software in favour of free and open-source software alternatives in a move it hopes will save it money. According to a report in Business Daily, the migration away from proprietary systems will related costs go down by 20% initially but by as much as 80% within three
Huawei says it has won contracts to provide new backhaul networks for Movicel in Angola and MTC in Namibia, both of which plan to launch among the continent’s first commercial long-term evolution (LTE) networks. The Chinese company has already been instrumental in the
Kenya’s government has secured a 6bn shilling (R580m) loan from China to connect 36 Kenyan districts using fibre-optic cable. The project is intended to provide the East African nation’s government with the ability to communicate and transact digitally, even from remote areas. The project forms part of a
With competitive pressures increasing, voice markets maturing and price wars becoming more prevalent, telecommunications operators in Africa have to improve their efficiencies, cut costs and find new areas in which to grow, especially if they don’t want to be
Last week’s purchase by Visa of Cape Town-based mobile payments company Fundamo in a US$110m all-cash deal demonstrates clearly how the race is on to provide electronic financial services using cellphones, especially in emerging markets