The population of Africa is estimated to be 1,037,524,058 but out of these people only 118,609,620, which is 11.4% of the population (the smallest in the world) can access Internet. Internet can be accessed by these people by means of the traditional and new forms, which include, office desktops(PCs) and laptops, home computers and Mobile hand held devices like Smart Phones. Internet is still distributed and transmitted to users by the Internet service providers through a mix of traditional and also new methods which include, Leased lines, ISDN lines, ADSL links, Broadband Wimax and WiFi, Mobile Dongles and satellite among others.
Although most of offices are trying to jump onto the wagon of Internet by availing Internet to each and every computer in the office, Internet usage at homes and in places of freedom is still limited. This is greatly attributed to either the limited distribution methods in homes, or the cost of acquiring the devices necessary in the usage of Internet at a personal level for homes and Mobile Internet usage.
Researchers are predicting that Mobile (smart phones) Internet will overtake office and cooperate (PC) Internet as means of accessing Internet in the near future.
Companies like Google are planning to reduce the cost of smart phones in Africa and other Phone companies like Nokia are encouraging economies in East Africa to remove taxes on Mobile phones to up mobile penetration and Mobile Internet penetration.
Although some people support the move, other people are looking at the other side of the coin. People against the move are wondering whether really when there are more Internet enabled hand held devices, we shall enjoy more Internet penetration. People have sighted a possibility of having these smart phones being used for only voice calls, which gives a very low utilization of the phone . There is also a possibility of these device producers looking for market of their products with out necessarily bringing up some thing for the sake of Africa.
Internet penetration is not only affected by the cost of ownership in Africa but also other factors like cost of production by the service providers also come into play. Most areas are not covered by the conventional Broadband Internet, which is only found in the capital cities and major towns of the African Countries.
According to your insight, do you think the move for African countries to reduce/remove import duties on Internet enabled devices as a way of increasing the availability of Smart Phones could allow higher Internet penetration in Africa?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Is Mobile Number Portability a failure
Mobile Network Portability is a service that allows mobile service consumers to switch between providers while maintaining their phone number. It's implementation in a region is expected to deepen the level of competition of Mobile telephone operators for customers and this competition may be switched to quality of services and innovativeness. (CCK). Mobile Network Portability solves the problem of customers who hold more than one phone, each for a network and losing contacts when one switches from network to network.
Kenya on the 1st April 2011 became the 63rd country (joining the likes of Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, in Africa) in the world to implement this service, where it became part of the legislation for performing a GSM license for the four GSM operators.
Although it is aimed at simplifying the lives of the customers and upping the service quality offered by the GSM operators through competition, it's uptake in many countries has been lacking. The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) says that it carried out public sensitizations and consultations between 2004 and 2008, which showed too much readiness from the customers.
TNS RMS, the largest leading market research agency in Africa has looked at the question of uptake. It conducted a short qualitative study to investigate what ordinary Kenyans think about the move, and reviewed some experience from other markets but neither suggested that portability will have a major positive impact on consumers.
Our qualitative investigation amongst Kenyan consumers indicated that while press speculation and advertising by the likes of Airtel has meant that awareness of the plans are quite high, consumer comprehension remains generally low, and the benefits are not considered clear or compelling. Some thought that portability simply meant swapping provider others thought you could use the same number for multiple providers. Around charges, consumers were not clear on whether they would be charged to swap back to their original provider...Says the report
The CCK says the idea behind introducing number portability was to introduce checks into industry. The Director of CCK also states that instead of looking at the number of people going to port, the commission was looking at the checks the policy was going to introduce in the Telecommunication Market. This comes to contradict the facts of 2004-2008 consultations, and also conflicts with the principles of ICT strategic Policy formulation. Joan Lloyd states that 'stakeholder buy-in' is key to successful Implementation of new ideas. She further points out that with out stakeholder buy-in, we get a wall between the new ideas and the old ideas. With these facts, one can take MNP as a failure in Kenya, because it has failed to win the hearts of some stakeholders and some are not even finding their expectations in the policy.
Using Kenya as a Benchmarking comparator in MNP to Uganda, would you support Uganda to go ahead and implement this policy? Do you take Kenya's case as a failure?
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