FortySouth

So the Attorney General Amos Wako emerges from the shadows on the issue of the Kenya Communications Amendment Act 2008 to say that the document with comments from the media through the Media Owners Association, is now ready for discussion, with a meeting possibly late in the week.

Curiously, this seemed only to follow prompting from MOA and The Standard Group after they complained of the lopsided communication between them and the Government as they marked the anniversary of the infamous State-sanctioned raid.

So what can we expect to come of such a meeting? I dare say – not that much. Probably some sandbagging by Government since the effort is now losing political steam. The media will need to keep up the pressure to maintain this issue as front page headlines.

Of course with the Act, a couple of Clauses do need to be reexamined (my thoughts on what should be amended).

The interest in mobile banking in developing countries has seen an exponential increase in recent years.

Why? Because, especially among African nations, it represents perhaps the perfect business opportunity – the confluence of the ubiquity of mobile phone subscribers and the fact that many yet do not own bank accounts. That notwithstanding, there’s the increasing need for financial transactions to occur in a secure, real-time and low-cost fashion.

To this end, the GSM Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are working together under the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Program to “fund regulatory and market research to help overcome some of the barriers of providing these services and demonstrate the business case for serving this market”.

I think once such a business case is made to banking regulators, the process of approval for mobile service providers to provide these services may be hastened because they won’t feel like they’re groping in the dark in this new policy area.

Once the regulatory hurdles are surmounted, the onus will be on mobile network operators to provide value-added services and focus on service delivery.

Orange Kenya is stepping it up.

Yesterday the company announced a 40% price reduction on their prepaid data plan for Fixed Plus (formerly Telkom Wireless) subscribers, offering internet access on their CDMA-based mobile handsets at Sh.1/min between 7p – 7a, down from Sh.1.75/min in the same time bracket.

Packet rates are up to 153Kbps, indicating that it is most likely using CDMA2000 1xRTT as its underlying packet service. Average rates are, however, in the 60-100Kbps range. Safaricom and Zain utilize GPRS and EDGE packet service for 2G handsets, and HSPA for 3G models.

It’s not clear if the rate extends through the weekends as well, but judging from the company site it appears the Sh. 3.50/min rate stands for peak periods 7a – 7p.

The new frontier that mobile service providers will be competing in is the data service offerings. Mobile data and video traffic is expected to increase exponentially on a global scale, judging from Cisco’s  recently updated Visual Networking Index.

Clearly, this plan and price reduction effort is targeted at home users, small businesses and “road warriors”. I think the offering will gain some traction over time among technology-inclined medium and low-income earners due to its present availability, low cost (free activation, low access rate, low denomination recharge cards) and powered by the need for information.