Tag Archive for 'zain'

Spoiler reveals Airtel Re-brand of Zain Africa has started.

Published on November 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Thanks to a heads up from Mark Kaigwa who let out the spoiler on Twitter today, looks like we can finally figure out who has been running the “incognito” and very visible campaign that asks “What does freedom mean to you?” in a major advertising campaign on TV and Print media in Kenya. The URL (and phrase) for the campaign is http://www.letsfeelfree.com which actually sounds quite Kenyan if you ask me clearly points to a correlation between news from Indiamag.in and Letsfeelfree.com from.

To illustrate, here is the what is expected to be the new Airtel logo which is to be unveiled globally across all its operations including the recently acquired Zain Africa:

http://www.indiamag.in/bharti-airtel-to-unveil-new-logo-next-week.html

And here is a more or less full screen grab at what you can find on http://www.letsfeelfree.com

And finally, on closer inspection, you can see that the logo on the sofa is actually the same one.

So, there you have it! This is what the new global corporate identity for Airtel and soon Zain Africa will look like from next week.

Bharti Airtel and IBM Join Forces to Transform Africa’s Mobile Communications Market.

Published on September 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

10-year agreement in principle will extend innovative relationship that began in 2004; IBM to handle IT for Bharti Airtel’s 16 operations in Africa.

In the first of its kind alliance in Africa to enable Bharti Airtel to deliver innovative and affordable 2G and 3G mobile services across in Africa. Cutting-edge technology from IBM will be used to bring enhanced efficiencies and benefit customers, employees and business partners of Bharti Airtel.

In a move that will accelerate the transformation of African mobile communications and positively impact the speed of economic development across the African continent, Bharti Airtel and IBM (NYSE: IBM) on the 17th of September 2010 announced the selection of IBM to manage the computing technology and services that power Bharti Airtel’s mobile communications network spanning 16 African countries.  An agreement is expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter.

Under a completed agreement, IBM will deploy and manage state-of-the-art information technology infrastructure and applications to support Bharti Airtel’s goal of bringing affordable and innovative mobile services to remote locations in Africa.  In addition, IBM will deploy advanced technologies created by IBM Research, including the Spoken Web — a voice-enabled Internet technology that allows users to access and share information simply by talking over an existing telephone. This is particularly compelling for populations with little or no literacy, visual impairments, or which lack access to PCs.

When completed, the agreement will extend a deep relationship between IBM and Bharti Airtel that was established in 2004 when South Asia’s leading mobile communications provider tapped IBM to run the IT and applications for its entire Indian network.  Since then, Bharti Airtel has seen explosive growth – from six million subscribers to more than 150 million today.  Bharti Airtel plans to replicate the success of its relationship with IBM by lowering the barrier to entry for the people of Africa to own a mobile device.

According to a Deloitte report commissioned by the mobile communications industry association GSMA, only 40 out of every 100 Africans have a mobile phone.  However, demand is growing at an average rate of 25 percent annually, and a 10 percent rise in mobile penetration could increase gross domestic product  by 1.2 per cent in developing markets.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel, said:  “There are huge opportunities throughout Africa to transform how people communicate and how communities interact.  Delivering on that opportunity through affordable mobile communications for everyone is our focus.

“We are delighted to extend our successful relationship with IBM in South Asia to Africa.  This transformational business delivery model, which will be a first in Africa’s telecom industry, will bring enhanced efficiencies to our operations and help us deliver world-class mobile services to our customers.

“It will also offer career enhancement opportunities to Bharti Airtel’s employees in the IT domain who will now get exposure to global best practices and latest technologies with IBM.  More importantly, this alliance underlines our commitment to the growth of Africa’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and contributes towards bridging the digital divide on the continent.”

Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM, said:  “We see our strategic relationship with Bharti Airtel as a powerful example of building a smarter planet.  We have achieved great success together in India, and now we are bringing that model to Africa.  By building a 21st century telecommunications infrastructure for the continent – in effect, treating all of Africa as a system of systems – we expect to help spark transformation not just in communications but across all sectors of society – empowering businesses, governments and individual citizens to connect, innovate and achieve economic growth.”

Under the 10-year planned agreement, IBM will consolidate 16 different IT environments across Bharti Airtel’s African operations into an integrated IT system and will oversee the management of all of the applications, data center operations, servers, storage and desktop services.

When the agreement becomes final, IBM will provide customer support applications that include customer relationship management, billing and self-care that will empower customers and assist Bharti Airtel in delivering innovative and convenient 2G and 3G mobile services.  In addition, IBM plans to deploy a powerful content management system to offer rich media content such as music and video over mobile devices, while simultaneously facilitating the growth of the application developer community in Africa.  The strategic partnership will enable Bharti Airtel to scale its network and systems to more than 100 million African customers by 2012.

IBM will also build automated internal systems for Bharti Airtel’s business which will result in enhanced efficiency and empowerment for employees through applications that deliver processes and data on a real time basis – both on PCs and mobile devices.  Business partners such as distributors and retailers will benefit from on demand data by simply using mobile devices to increase efficiencies.  IBM will also be responsible for deploying advanced information security systems that will provide privacy protection for customer data and enhance the resilience of enterprise systems against threats.

Bharti Airtel has operations in Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Zain Kenya’s “Dabo Dabo” Bonus Airtime Promotion.

Published on September 17, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

From this Thursday this week, Zain Kenya customers enjoy free airtime for seven days after the company launched its Dabo Dabo promotion. The promotion will see customers double their airtime every time they top up their phones with any denomination ranging from Kes. 50.00 to Kes. 1,000.00.  The bonus airtime earned in the two day Dabo Dabo promotion will be used for calls and SMS within Zain Kenya’s network.

Zain Kenya Managing Director Rene Meza said the promotion was yet another reward to customers following the positive response in the market since the company launched the most affordable calling charges in Kenya. “The bonus airtime applies automatically to all our prepaid customers immediately after loading airtime to their phones. We shall continue unveiling value adding propositions for our customers to enable them to experience our exciting products and services,” said Mr. Meza.

Last month, Zain Kenya shocked Kenya’s telecommunications market by launching the lowest rates for calling all networks in Kenya. The company now charges Kes. 3.00 for calls to any network while SMS rates were also lowered to Kes. 1.00. Besides the new rates, Customers on Zain’s Club 20 service can send unlimited SMS all day and make free calls from 11.00 pm to 6.00 am for only Kes. 20.00 per day. “Affordability and high quality service are our main pillars in our journey towards achieving market leadership in Kenya,” he said.

Finally, Orange joins Kenya’s mobile tariff bandwagon.

Published on August 26, 2010 in Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Well, looks like everyone is now on-board the mobile tariff (war) bandwagon that started last week after Zain dramatically lowered their call and SMS rates. In particular, after that announcement, YU immediately responded as did Safaricom earlier this week. Now, as of yesterday, Orange is the last mobile network to “hop on” with new reduced call and SMS rates.

Orange, as expected, finally announced a new low call rate of Kes. 2.00 per minute for Orange and Telkom Fixed calls. In addition, Orange also has a new low SMS rate of Kes. 1.00 for on-net messages. Lastly, Orange is offering FREE calls from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm on the Orange network for a fixed daily rate of Kes. 100.00 which is quite impressive by all measures.

So there you have it – we are in the middle of a full-scale mobile tariff war in Kenya and the irony is that there is no clear winner as all operator rates have now hit rock bottom. At the end of the day, its the subscribers who are winning, or so it seems? However, what I would really like to see is the same sort of aggressive price cuts for Internet services – this would really make things interesting as they are way too high at the moment.

A tale of CCK, Zain, Safaricom and YU.

Published on August 20, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

What a week its been in Kenya’s mobile networks sector! So much has happened in such a short space of time. It all started on Monday this week when the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) announced a 50% price reduction on mobile network interconnection rates from Kes. 4.42 to Kes. 2.21. This action in turn led to Zain immediately lowering their call and SMS rates dramatically as reported on this blog thereafter.

Zain’s new low tariffs triggered a stampede of new cutsomers and as such its interconnection to Safaricom clogged up, leading to poor service. Zain then proceeded to blame Safaricom as the “dominant” mobile network for not upgrading their interconnection capacity in-time so as to accommodate the deluge of new customers signing up. Safaricom in turn noted that Zain had failed to inform them in good time to upgrade their interconnection capacity which they said pointed to Zain’s bad planning and ulterior motives.

As all of this drama unfolded, YU announced new call rates of Kes. 3.00 and SMS rates of Kes. 0.50 yesterday (YU’s SMS rates are half those of Zain). In the final analysis, we are clearly in the throes of yet another mobile tariffs war. However, no word yet on how Safaricom and Orange will respond to these new developments. One thing is for sure, Safaricom will definitely come back with something big, especially considering they still hold 80% market share in Kenya.

The Bharti Airtel effect begins taking shape at Zain with new low tariffs.

Published on August 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

In two full page ads in today’s editions of the Daily Nation and the East African Standard, Zain has announced unprecedented low and permanent tariffs for both mobile calls and SMS messages to ALL networks in Kenya.

In a move that is clearly geared towards wooing a large number of subscribers from market leaders Safaricom, Zain has announced a new low tariffs of Kes. 3.00 to call any mobile network in Kenya as well as Kes. 1.00 per SMS message sent to any mobile network in Kenya.

This confirms that Bharti Airtel’s influence is starting to take shape at Zain since it was recently acquired with the rest of its African operations. Bharti Airtel is well known for having a low-cost and high volume business model that has made it extremely popular and successful in India.

In particular, the full page ads today have a clincher at the bottom showing that they are clearly targeting Safaricom by stating that “going green is not always the better option”. In addition, the ads also indicate that there are no terms and conditions attached to the new tariffs and that these are indeed permanent.

Going forward, what remains to be seen is how Safaricom and the other mobile networks in Kenya will respond to these new low-cost tariffs. However, in concluding, what can be expected is that revenues will most probably take a hit for all of them as they will have to match or lower the new tariffs to retain their customers. So, let mobile tariff wars begin afresh! :)

Manoj Kohli of Airtel Kenya briefs the Media (Video)

Published on July 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Below is an 18 minute video that I had meant to upload a week ago but it proved to be a challenge at the time. Finally though, its up! Its a complete clip of the briefing made to Kenyan Media by Manoj Kholi of Bharti Airtel and Airtel Kenya of their plans for this market. Its also my second uploaded video from the event where Naushad Merali also spoke briefly and that video is also on this blog. Enjoy the same:

Manoj Kohli of Bharti Airtel talks to the Media of their plans for Airtel Kenya. from Moses Kemibaro on Vimeo.

Bharti Airtel to harness local manpower in growing Zain Kenya.

Published on June 22, 2010 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

In the news this week, Bharti Airtel which recently acquired 15 African operations of Zain including Kenya for over US$ 10 Billion reiterated that it will seek to empower local operations by developing its local human capital as part of its business strategy. This news comes after various reports last week that had indicated that Bharti Airtel had intended to bring large numbers of senior management staff from its Asian operations that was sending jitters through the Zain Africa workforce.

The proposed approach to how Zain Africa local operations would be handled was communicated by Bharti Airtel’s CEO, Manoj Kohli, during the mobile company’s Africa leadership workshop held in Kampala between the Bharti’s executives and 15 country Managing Directors over this past weekend. Speaking about the workshop, Mr. Rene Meza, Managing Director, Zain Kenya said that the joint meeting provided an opportunity for the business leaders to share each market’s vision and strategy.

“This week, the senior management team from Zain Africa and Bharti came together to jointly set out the vision and strategy for Airtel Africa as ‘one team’. One thing that has clearly emerged from this meeting is that Airtel’s operations in each market, including Kenya, will be further empowered to be truly local businesses, and therefore our existing employees are critical to achieving this vision. “Airtel is a highly professional, innovative and successful business, and we are all set to benefit from the transfer of knowledge and skills into our business, and we welcome that” He added.

During the meeting, it was agreed that a small core team of 40 Bharti Airtel employees with specialized expertise, will be deployed across all 15 countries of Africa which will continue employing a total of 6,500 employees. 20 out of these 40 will be stationed in an all new, 100-employee Africa Headquarters which will be based in Nairobi. In addition to Airtel Africa Head office in Nairobi, all its strategic partners are planning to set up new offices or expand existing offices in Nairobi. Equally, in the next six months, 20 professionals from across its 15 African operations will be inducted by Bharti to its operations in India as part of its talent cross pollination program.

Zain Kenya to launch 3G in July 2010.

Published on June 2, 2010 in Uncategorized. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This is probably the biggest news in Kenya’s telecoms sector after Safaricom’s stunning financial results from last week. According to various online news sources, Zain Kenya is on track to secure a license for 3G services by July 2010. This comes on the back of an announcement from Zain Kenya’s CEO Rene Meza who says that the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has agreed to (finally!) lower 3G license fees from the current astronomical US$ 25 Million to a significantly less expensive price. If this is indeed true then the CCK should be announcing the new 3G license rates sometime this week according to media reports.

Zain Kenya is currently Kenya’s second largest mobile network with around 2 million users. Currently, Zain only offers 2.5 G services and as such are unable to compete effectively with Safaricom’s 3G service. In addition, neither YU or Orange Kenya have 3G as well and we are yet to hear what their reactions will be to this latest announcement. One thing is certain, mobile data is fast becoming a linchpin for Safaricom’s superior business performance for both retail and business customer segments. It will be interesting to see if Zain Kenya can match or better Safaricom’s 3G pricing going forward as this has been quite expensive for most users to-date. Whatever the case, its been a long time coming but finally 3G will be more widespread in Kenya.

In light of Zain Kenya going 3G, and presumably the same will happen with YU and Orange Kenya in due course, what remains to be seen is how Safaricom will respond. Incidentally, Safaricom have already announced that they plan to start testing 4G services later this year on their network. At this juncture as it stands, the CCK has not yet published the new reduced 3G license pricing, leave alone 4G so Safaricom is clearly well ahead of the market. 4G is also known as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and typically allows users to upload and download movies, music and data to their mobile devices far quicker than 3G or 2G.

Zain Kenya launches low-cost voice calls with “Jikonnect”.

Published on May 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In the media this past week, Zain Kenya has launched “Jikonnect”, a range of low-cost (and apparently permanent) tariffs for voice calls on and off their network. The way Jikonnect works is that on-network calls between the hours of 6.00 pm and 6.00 am are only Kes. 3.00 per minute whereas off-network calls to other mobile networks in Kenya are Kes. 6.00 per minute at the same timings.

Jikonnect is being cited as part of Zain Kenya’s strategy to capitalize on a low-cost but high volume model that recent acquirer Bharti Airtel has had lots of success with in India. Undoubtedly, this is going to lead to yet another mobile telecoms price war as each of the 4 mobile networks tries to retain and grow market share but invariably usually results in lower Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).