Battleship Telecom

One of Uganda's most vibrant economic sectors is that of Telecommunication. Split it up into several sections and you will be able to identify how best to beat your foe.
The first is SMS. At about 150 UGX a pop, there is a lot of money to be made encouraging customers to send simple messages. No wonder the telecoms invest a lot of money in sms and win competitions.

The Second is in phone calls. Even if the land line has been ignored, it is still by far the most effective way to manage an office as well as a home. There are a host of new technologies that have been created to help businesses manage clients with support platforms that can handle task formerly assigned to customer service representatives. Even if there has a risen a host of options for customer service such as the use of social media, there has been an unfair compromise with the formerly useful voice that used to exist on the other side of the line. While some companies prefer to use Business Process Outsourcing to handle the complex task of customer relations, there will be a lot of debate around which option is preferable and who ends up on the winning side. It is not uncommon to make a call to a mobile provider only to find oneself going around in circles stuck in a cycle of automated responses pre-configured to present the most useful and cost effective response. The other advantage of this service is the idea that it caters to the bulk of Uganda's users. The landlines also allows small business people to sell airtime which can be purchased on a whole sale price.                                                     

The Third is the Internet. There are many options for this too! Most of the money is made by splitting the Internet options into two. Payment per mb per minute or for packages. This too has created a slough of options fueled by the innovations of Uganda's leading marketing gurus. Names such as 'paka' a play of words created to suit the ganda speaking youth; with sms, Internet and myriad other caller options. The fourth is the use of Wireless Hotspots. These were very popular for restaurant which

i argue, are still to be exploited as business centers. 

In previous post i have argued for what i call Business Spaces. This is an idea i came up with after spending sometime working in the City of Kampala. It is not a complete reinvention of the wheel but rather just a modification and integration of ideas. It enables young business people to find places where they can get space, Internet time, advise (from Ministry of ICT, Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development, Ministry of Finance, Enterprise Uganda and Uganda Revenue Authority) as long as they sign up and become member of the business space project. Probably the most effective use of the wireless service in restaurants was Infocom (www.infocom.co.ug) as well as Uganda Telecom (www.utl.co.ug) which was extremely generous with their provision and development of wireless infrastructure. The Fourth is Mobile money

which is attempting to hit the banks where it hurts.

The biggest challenge will probably emerge out of the process of regulation. But the service is promising. Leading in this development are the Kenyans  (with the Mobile Money) and the Indians in the background (often driving the programming and development that powers these platforms). The fifth and often the one that is most ignored-is the good old analogue platform which focuses on physical infrastructure. Those who champion the use of social media in reformation will remember that the Egyptians made use of good old dile up (old school modem use for Internet) when the government in Egypt decided to turn off the Internet there.

The sixth is the use of Server Technologies and the development of storage for large groups and institutions. Combine this with cloud computing and the rise of out-of-office projects and you have a good income generating option. But this is a lot more serious that just income generation. It involves the guardianship of the most precious resource of our age-Information. This is probably why other similar services such as the Application Service Providers have arisen. So far Warid Telecom seems to have made some inroads with this kind of service. We are yet to see how much of a push will take place to develop these services and systems.

The seventh is designed purely for the creations of applications. But it has morphed into a collaboration with start-ups where young minds have merged with larger companies in a symbiotic relationship in which has revolutionized the way in which companies hire new staff, advertise as well as Network. Some have even attempted to challengee the manner in which we learn by suggesting that start-up incubators offer an option to training for MBAs.