Safaricom has launched a new offer for their mobile data at only Kshs. 8.00 per day, you have unlimited mobile internet. This offer is however for people accessing the internet using their handsets. Safaricom has recently been promoting usage of mobile data with lots of giveaways for their customers ranging from airtime to MacBooks.

Safaricom has also been massively promoting Facebook mobile which clearly is their biggest data revenue. This is just another way of Safaricom telling its competition they are ahead of their game and they are big enough to afford crazy offers!

To subscribe, users are supposed to dial *544#

First of all, I was not able to do live blogging, I only made notes so I could post a series of posts on the fruitful event, this being the first one. Am doing this at 1.26am so this will be the only one I do before I sleep, guess the events of the day took me past what I expected, I was too captivated by the sight, the sound and the presentations made at this first TEDxDar. First of all, like a lot of other people, I could not find my way to the venue, had to make a few calls but eventually, I made it. I got in the earliest I could and I think I was the first guest to arrive and register. It felt friendly already, the registration desk was full of life and love. It felt good to see my logo on the sponsor’s banner.

TEDxDar 2010 Sponsors

Had not had a moment to take some breakfast, maybe intentionally because Kathleen Bomani (@KateBomz ) had made it clear that there will be plenty of food, serving both breakfast and lunch, true to this, there was quite some delicacies. I had a nice Tanzanian mahamri, a cup of tea and an apple. At this point I was busy tweeting directions to a few of the lost ones, including Vanessa Mdee (@VanessaMdee) who I met a couple of minutes later. I was also making good use of my iPhone camera and the new Twitter application for iPhone taking pictures and tweeting them. I was not quite sure of how the event was going to turn out and my expectations were kept low to avoid disappointment. I have been a keen follower and e-vangelist of TEDxDar and I had a few people who actually thought I was in the organizing team, so it had better be a successful event. The crowd started building up bit by bit and familiar faces started showing up…familiar from twitter and not people I had met before. This was like being inside a reality twitter show for a moment only a few people looked either taller or shorter than my expectation. People were ready to socialize and exchange ideas, everyone was friendly and no one bashed me for taking a picture or uploading it, in fact, they loved it.

A few of the speakers were at the event much earlier than lots of us and this was great and it was encouraging for me and am sure to the organizers. Live stream equipment setup, high speed WI-FI connected and the place was starting to feel tech.

Just as I would have expected, TANESCO (The electricity distribution company) did its thing and there was no power at all. DIA was well prepared for this and a generator got us moving immediately. I had a nice corner at the back of the sitting, the only crew besides the sound technicians with a table. The session started on time, the schedule was well followed.

Maya "The Poet" Wegerif

Speakers were on fire (Will do detailed posts on their presentations/speeches individually within this series). The audience was keen and totally engaged. Most people were on their Blackberries, iPhones and Nokias and my assumption is that they were all twittering it. We had a great timeline with the #TEDxDar tag on twitter. Each speaker sounded very relevant and maybe its me but I think the choice of speakers was the best it could have been, although Nakaaya who was still on the programme was missing from the show, I hear she had “things” to do and she could not show up. The room had life, humor, teachings, love for our heritage, culture, tradition, technology, art and no one could miss the lady in blue, Maya the poet. Her performance was stunning, her composition moving. There were great TED videos and lots of lessons for our needy economies, our corrupt political system, the rich leaders of the poorest nations in the world, the mistold story of the poverty in Africa, the imported things that we produce, the hope and promise of our generations, the eventuality and necessity of change and self engagement in being agents of change, the reality of life as it is in Africa, the cost of living compared to the so called first world, how the rich get it easy and the poor spend more money that they do not have to make a living and so much more.

There was breaks within the sessions and first one there were refreshments, nice drinks and snacks, a visit to the sponsor’s desks and chit chats. Among the sponsors was Push Mobile who had a few of their products showcased and explained.

Lunch at TEDxDar 2010

When time for lunch came, we had great African delicacies. It was indeed looking and tasting great, had time to physically chat the people I normally see on twitter. Issa Mwamba, Sajjo, Gilsant, Technodesigns and more. It was a fun. As the day proceeded towards an end, the fire was heating up. The event was well arranged and we had one of the speakers address the crowd from a live skype stream and the quality was great and oh, she was great, made very clear points about things that we all need to touch on to change the way we live. (A post dedicated to this speech will come in the series).

And there was an after party, people were to meet the speakers and chat them, discuss anything and get familiar, unfortunately, I didnt make it for that one, got diverted elsewhere by the people I met today. It ended up well after watching a nice soccer game.

I also made it out of the place with a T-shirt carrying a really good design with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and TEDxDar on it, some really nice Tanzania and Zanzibar facts postcards that i must commend whoever did them highly.

I got more than love at the event, I socialized, tweeted and replied to posts made by people I could see smiling at me from the other end of the room and it felt fabulous.

I will be posting a few more articles focusing on the speeches and presentations at TEDxDar 2010. I have to sleep so I write the real intellectual stuff when am fresh!

The official poster for the event

TED is made from initials of 3 words: Technology, Entertainment and Design. TEDx events are independently organized events which are about ideas worth spreading – here is an interesting blend, TEDx meets a rich Swahili culture when it comes to town in Dar es salaam this coming Saturday 22nd May 2010 in an interesting inaugural TEDxDar. Am a foreigner, who has found a home in the sweet welcome of Dar. The warmth of the people of Tanzania is exceptional. The love for people within them is something you will never find anywhere else in Africa. They have passion for soccer more than anything else I know. They are a united people. Despite having too many tribes, they all speak a common language, Swahili.

Entertainment in Tanzania is unique. Local content is highly valued as compared to western content. The movie industry is booming. Local musicians are entertaining us in Swahili and making it to our hearts. They are expressive and they are passionate about their culture yet very careful to not let it keep them off connecting with the rest of the world. Nightlife is great, everyone becomes familiar too quickly. In the last few months I have seen great international musicians perform in Tanzania and corporates really believe in the power of music and art as a way of outreach. I have seen Busta Rhymes, Beenie Man, Angelique Kidjo, Sean Kingston and more just within under a year visit and light up Tanzania.

I have seen the great Naomi Campbell in Tanzania, mixed with Hasheem Thabit, Tanzania’s own NBA star, had a drink with Nancy Sumari, former Miss World Africa and Miss Tanzania, shared a cab with the famous Canavaro and attended my first ever soccer match in Tanzania. Its a land of great influence.

Technology is quickly elevating Tanzania and while the rest of Africa takes a step into the mobile and internet sweep, Tanzania ranks 8th in Africa on the state of the mobile web report. Mobile phone companies are in price wars to ensure the consumer gets the best and young innovators are fast moving to create localized content and get things moving towards the first lane.

TEDxDar cant come more interesting. It blends all this and puts it in a single event, a great Saturday to share ideas, mix and socialize. Great speakers in the list to take the very interesting themes, my favorite being “What Would Nyerere Do?” Its not specified with what but since am in the ICT industry, I would like to imagine what Nyerere would do with my iPhone, 6 Telecoms’ 5MB/s connection and probably a handy PSP. There is no telling, I bet Nakaaya Sumari (Tusker Project Fame 2006, musician and politician) who is among the speakers will be there to tell us what she sees “In-Between Spaces” the other theme at the event.

Selemani Kinyunyu, a slim young man who I met back in 2008 at my Nairobi office came to me to do a website for what I found as a really interesting idea about carbon offsets will be there too, maybe I can understand a few lines I missed then. In simple words, TEDxDar brings a unique diversity together and it sure is the ultimate event and am proud to be associated with this event.

I will be blogging about it here on that day and also doing twitter updates (Follow @raidarmax, @pushmobile, @majibuanswer, @TEDxDar and @tristarafrica for live updates on the event day. Also, use the #TEDxDar keyword on tweets and tracking software for live posts from the event). It is an exciting moment and lets keep it TEDxDar!

And for party animals and those of us with the energy to stay up late, there will be an after party to go with it! Its also about entertainment, isnt it?

When I said I was on the right side of life banking with Equity and using Safaricom’s M-Pesa, I was 100% sure of what I was saying. Now, the two giants have joined hands to make the most incredible service in mobile money worldwide, a bank account you can open, operate, save, withdraw, access loans and micro-financing and any other service within it just from your mobile phone. Not WAP enabled phones or complicated methods of getting that achieved but the world famous STK service from Safaricom, M-Pesa.

M-Kesho (I still dont get the name – M is definitely for mobile, Kesho is Swahili for tomorrow so combining the two…I guess its the future banking) is the new baby in town.

From my view, its a great product especially for the unbanked and those who find it difficult to access loans. While banking services are important, lots of Africans have no access to it due to poor infrastructure, lack for value of banking, processes involved in our banking systems, requirements and all that. During the short while that M-Pesa has run, its managed to handle more transactions in a day only in Kenya than Western Union handles in the entire world. It is proof that there is need and that innovation can be greatly used to improve the livelihood of the common man whose income is way less than average. So now you can open an account with only Kshs. 100 which is roughly about $1.25 and no operating cost. This for me makes up what we need to bring our economy to scale.

M-Pesa is serving over 10 million people in Kenya of all classes. That is where the mark has been drawn. I like what Michael Joseph has done with Safaricom and the fact that they are huge and not developer friendly does not make me like them any less. Safaricom has played its role in society. Thanks to Safaricom, there are more internet users in Kenya now.

That said and done, Safaricom can do better -  by working with local developers and allowing them to develop on their platform. Safaricom needs to learn from the likes of Apple, the success of the iStore is because each developer is given an equal chance. We can turn round Africa if only corporates were not as selfish as they are currently. Still on Safaricom, we would like to see you promote local websites in the same strength you are putting behind Facebook with the Safaricom Live brand. Lets hope someone from Safaricom actually sees and forwards this link to someone “BIG”!

Congrats on the launch to both Safaricom and Equity – BTW…none of their websites had information about this by the time I started to write this blog. Pull up your cables people!

Tigo Campaign

Mobile operators in Tanzania are at great war, price wars that is. When Tigo lowered its call costs to Tsh. 1 per second (1USD = Tshs. 1350), all the other networks branded it as the inferior network. Tigo is considered the village boy by the other players, its the only mobile network in Tanzania that has not bothered to sell expensive data plans, not bothered to improve its data platform (still on GPRS) and not even bothered to offer any corporate services to its subscribers and instead concentrated on the small consumer who is the majority. This concept has worked for them greatly, they have turned out as one of the biggest networks in Tanzania by subscriber base.

Zantel, a CDMA/GSM network which is leading in EVDO data services in Dar es salaam was second to introduce the 1 shilling per second calls and a 3.45 shillings across other networks. With a very small subscriber base compared to the other networks, this was not very notable even with really colorful branding, very well done campaigns featuring popular artists including Lady Jaydee (Leading Musician) and Nancy Sumari (Former Miss Tanzania & Miss World Africa) among others.

Early this month, Vodacom followed and introduced 1 shilling per second for Vodacom to Vodacom calls and went down to serious campaigns featuring AY, a popular Tanzanian hip hop artist. The most surprising thing is that in a week of this launch, Tigo hit back with a half a shilling campaign titled “Tigo Thumni” with calls from Tigo to Tigo costing only half a Tanzanian shilling, meaning a call is 30 shillings a minute, which is literally the cheapest call rate in East Africa coming to about 1.65 Kenya shillings a minute.

Zain which for long stuck to its “corporate” outfit, today decided to unveil its 1 shilling per second campaign, not an offer but a rate reduction on Zain to Zain calls. So literally speaking, Tanzania is officially the country with the cheapest calling rates in East Africa if not Africa generally.

Data rates are also reasonable compared to Kenyan rates with Zantel’s EVDO service being the fastest in Dar es salaam and only going for Tshs. 10,000 for 200MB and Tshs. 70,000 for 2GB, way cheaper compared to Safaricom’s 3G which is the only service that comes closest in Kenya to what Zantel is offering.

Tigo is also rumored to be launching a mobile money transfer service in Tanzania to try seal the wholes which have seen Vodacom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap fail to hit the market as expected and reflected by the growth in Kenya.

While the call rates may be cheapest in Tanzania, customer care is worst in Africa here in my opinion, a shame because Tanzanians are among the most hospitable people I know.

The use of mobile internet in Kenya rose by 615.4% between November 2008 and November 2009, quite a heavy increase compared to other countries placed top 10 by  State of the Mobile Web, November 2009 a report by Opera, the most popular mobile browser currently. Got me thinking, Ghana is the biggest riser in this list, with over 4000% increase, followed by Kenya, the number of local mobile websites is ashamedly low and the increase within the said period of local mobile websites (or visits to them) is barely unnoticeable.

While the use of mobile internet is rising, content is lacking and this is where I say the African developers are sleeping on the job. We have most of the African traffic headed to Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo and other major American sites, while the local websites remain unnoticed. Its funny that on that list, Safaricom’s wapsite is not even on the top 10 of the Kenyan traffic while its the start page on default browsers on mobile phones if you are using their connection.

I have mentioned before that corporates need to brace up to these stats and start giving mobile web the place it deserves. Nation Media is one of the most visited website in Kenya on the web but its also not appearing on the list because their site is not mobile friendly and they do not have a wap version – Standard group appears at number 10 because they actually have a mobile news site.

For the next few years, the best traffic you will get on the African web is mobile and this is a challenge to developers to provide mobile content for Africa and you will create traffic like never before.

Kenya also received the Government Leadership Award.

Zain’s ZAP mobile money service also received Best Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service which also includes its service in Kenya.

Africa is really showing potential in software and mobile innovations and this is a great improvement from where we have been in the past.

Get the rest of the award winners at the GSM World website

Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom Ltd, has asked the government, specifically the licensing and regulatory commission, CCK to treat each operator equally and charge new players same fees Safaricom paid for their 3G licence, a whooping $25 million.

Its a nice thing that Safaricom has served us with all its might, while enjoying a monopoly and making a killing out of it. Safaricom has so far recovered their license fee and made more than enough profits from the users by over charging and in my view, we should let other players get easier terms since they have lesser subscribers and times have changed. Bandwidth is cheaper and more available too.

I really do not think its fair to the consumers not to allow the other players come in with easier terms because Safaricom will continue to control the prices.

As much as Safaricom has the best mobile internet service, its also the most expensive available. CCK, do us good by licensing other players and lets see where this takes our country.

I was in Nairobi when Safaricom launched the 7-day unlimited internet offer and I still had some data left on my account so I decided to use that until its finished then i can try the offer. Unfortunately I had to travel out of Kenya on Wednesday and at the airport, I managed to finish the data. When I got to my destination, I recharged my line and subscribed to the 7 day offer (Which I had actually just received an ad of via SMS a moment earlier while still out of Kenya). Unfortunately, I tried to connect and the connection was established but no data available. Connection kept timing out. When I called customer care, which got through to really quickly, they told me that I could not get the offer while roaming and as disappointed as I was, they promised to follow the case through to see what help I could get. I couldnt even get to connect using my normal airtime billing so I had to stay without the connection.

Next day a lady from Safaricom calls to just let me know they are working on the issue and they will be in touch. Another day later, they refund the airtime to my account, am able to use my account. Now that may sound like nothing to write about but please try call customer care in Tanzania, I have tried Vodacom, I will never try ever again. You just have no rights with the networks in Tanzania. Zain has an “unlimited” package for data which happens to be limited to 400mb. Try call them about it…

Congrats Michael Joseph, Safaricom made me proud to be a Kenyan today.

Safaricom and Equity bank have moved a step higher to strengthen their working relationship by introducing new ATM withdraw for M-Pesa through the Equity Bank ATM network. Equity Bank, Kenya’s largest bank in the aspect of account holders joins hand with Kenya’s largest money transfer service. Currently, M-Pesa has over 8 million users while Equity Bank offers 550 ATM points countrywide.

Just recently, Equity partnered with the 3rd competitor of Safaricom’s M-Pesa, yuCash offering similar services.

If you are web/mobile application developer in Africa, you have a great chance to win the $125,000 set aside for African developers by Nokia and get to sell your product on the Ovi store.

“We’re inviting all mobile and web application developers to create best-in-class applications to run on Nokia devices. This competition is aimed at the development of applications relevant to Africa. Whether it’s wallpapers or widgets, if it’s bold and brilliant and African then submit your content now!

We’re looking for applications that are as uniquely African as bunny chow and biltong are and ones which will add value to the lives of the Africans who use it.” Reads http://callingallinnovators.com/africa/

So…get creative and tap this great opportunity.

We are all happy when we can get an extra service at no extra cost. Blackberry addicts like me must admit that without the unlimited internet service that comes with it (For a small monthly fee), it would not be as interesting. Am sure at one point or another you have tried to connect your Blackberry as a modem or thought of how convenient the internet connection would be on your laptop… unlimited internet is the best thing that ever happened to me (Currently on an unlimited 3G connection). Anyway, here is how you can get your Blackberry to work as a modem on your computer or laptop.

I assume you have the Blackberry Desktop installed (If not, get the latest version from the Blackberry website or use the CD that came with it to install the software and modem drivers).

1. Open your Desktop manager, leave it running on the background, you don’t need to do anything else on it.
2. Connect your Blackberry to your computer/laptop.
3. Confirm that the modem is installed. You can do this by going to Control Panel > Phones and Modems. In the Modems tab, you should see a new Standard Modem on a new port (such as COM6 or COM11). Click Properties -> Diagnostics -> Query Modem. You should see the following:
   ATQ0V1E0 – OK
   AT+GMM – BlackBerry IPmodem
   AT+FCLASS=? COMMAND NOT SUPPORTED
   AT#CLS=? COMMAND NOT SUPPORTED
   AT+GCI? COMMAND NOT SUPPORTED
   AT+GCI=? COMMAND NOT SUPPORTED
   ATI1 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI2 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI3 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI4 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI5 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI6 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   ATI7 – Research In Motion / BlackBerry IPmodem
   (Please note that this may differ depending on your Blackberry Model, just verify that the modem is connected and it works)
4. Click Properties -> Advanced. Add  initialization command with the appropriate carrier-specific APN Setting.
   For Vista users only: Under Control Panel>Phone and Modem>Properties on the General Tab, click “Change Settings”. After giving Administrator approval, click the Advanced tab. There, enter the appropriate APN settings for your carrier as noted below.

   +cgdcont=1,”IP”,”APN” e.g. Safaricom in Kenya would be +cgdcont=1,”",”safaricom”

5. Create a new connection and use the Blackberry modem to connect. Dial up number should be your normal GPRS/EDGE number (*99# for Safaricom) and authentication still the same (Safaricom: user – saf, password – data).
6. Disable IP Header Compression (*Vista users, see the note below)

1. Make sure TCP/IP Properties (Advanced) “Use IP Header Compression” checkbox is NOT checked. To verify this, do these steps:
   

   1. Start Menu->Network Connections->”BlackBerry Modem”
   2. Click Properties Button
   3. Click Networking Tab
   4. Select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)”
   5. Click Properties Button
   6. Click Advanced… Button
   7. Disable “Use IP header compression” checkbox
   8. Click all OK buttons to close all dialogs

   Also make sure you clear all these checkboxes, if you see any of these checked:
   Turn off “Enable Modem Compression”
   For Vista users only: Under the Network and Sharing Center, click “Manage Network Connections”. When the Network Connections screen is visible, you should have the Blackberry Modem connection you created. Right click the Blackberry Modem and select “Properties”. Under the Properties screen on the General tab, select the “Configure” button. Ensure that ALL check boxes are unchecked. Select “OK” to exit the screen. Under the Networking tab, select the properties for the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPV4). On the Properties screen, select the “Advanced” button. Ensure that “Use IP Header Compression” is unchecked. Select OK to exit the screen.

   Turn off “Enable Hardware Flow Control”
   Turn off “Enable Modem Error Control”

   After this step you are done! Connect to the internet and enjoy your surfing. Please note that I tested this with my Blackberry 5310 Perl. Lets know if you have any issues.
   

Motorola Cliq

The war of high end mobile gadgets initially dominated by Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry has a new player threatening to take over the market. Motorola has unveiled their first Android based smart phone, The Cliq. This new gadget has a sleek design more resembling the iPhone at a glance but moves slowly to prove better reliability when you pull up the slide with a QWETY keyboard that has always given Blackberry a lead ahead of the iPhone.

The phone has a touch screen and a physical slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, 3G connectivity, the ability to shoot video at 24 frames per second, a standard headphone jack and GPS capability.  A price for the device has not been announced yet but its not expected to go too far from the current prices of the high end iPhone and Blackberry.

The Cliq is lovely to hold. It feels quite slim (about 0.62 inches thick) and light (weighing 5.6 ounces). Comparatively, the Palm Pre is 0.67 inches thick and weighs 4.76 ounces, while the iPhone 3G is 0.48 inches thick and weighs 4.7 ounces. The sliding keyboard on the Cliq is smooth and the physical(!) keypad offers fantastic tactile feedback, making touch-typing a very real possibility. The phone comes in a polished black the company calls “Titanium” and “Winter White.” The 3.1-inch display is bright and easy to read — at least under the florescent lighting where we put the phone through its paces. The screen is touch capable and very, very responsive. It’s certainly on par with the iPhone.

The device will have a custom interface called Moto Blur that will bring together e-mail messages, text messages, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and photos into a single interface.

The new social Motorola

The Cliq has a 5.2-megapixel auto-focus camera. We tested it briefly by shooting some pics in low light and comparing it to photos from the iPhone’s camera. Guess what? The Cliq’s cam captured finer details and offered a brighter picture with true colors. It’s easy to share and upload photos, in the spirit of Cliq fun. The user interface on every photo has four choices: Share, Gallery, Set as Wallpaper and Delete. Clicking on the Share tab means you can post the photo to MySpace, Gmail, Picasa or any other photo-sharing site you have set up such as Flickr.

As usual, it launches the American and European market before it gets to Africa but am sure we shall have access to it real soon. It seems like the perfect gadget for anyone torn between the iPhone and a Blackberry, combining the business features of Blackberry and the social that is an iPhone.