Mobile Number Portability a Year Later

In a bid to promote effective competition in the mobile market segment, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) introduced the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in April 2011, a service that allows the consumers the flexibility and the convenience to retain subscribers’ numbers upon switching service providers.

According to CCK’s recent quarterly sector statistics report for the period covering January to March 2012, the uptake of this service has continued to show mixed signals in the mobile market segment since its inception. During the quarter under review, there were a total of 6,646 in-ports up from 2,407 in-ports recorded during the previous quarter, representing an increase of 176.1 per cent. The number of in-ports recorded since the establishment of the MNP service in April 2011 is shown in the table below.

Period	Jan-Mar 12	Oct-Dec 11	Jul-Sep 11	Apr-Jun 11
Number of in-ports	6,646	2,407	1,929	36,224
Variation	176.1	24.8	-94.7	-

This means that there have been a total of 47,206 in-ports, compared to a total number of 29,211,649 mobile phone subscribers during the period under review. Access to mobile telephony services continued to be realized as the quarter posted a mobile penetration of 74.0 per 100 inhabitants up from 71.3 per 100 inhabitants recorded during the previous quarter.

Source: CCK Quarterly Sector Statistics Report for January-March 2012

Fines for traffic offences to be paid through Faini Chap Chap

The Judiciary will this week on Thursday, September 20, 2012, officially launch a new system for paying traffic fines through M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer system run by Safaricom. The system dubbed Faini Chap Chap has been available at Milimani and Kibera Law Courts on a pilot phase basis and will be officially launched by the Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga. After the launch, the system will be official rolled out in all traffic courts and may be extended to other courts.

This will save traffic offenders the trouble of having to stand in long queues to pay their fines. The users will simply follow seven simple steps on their phones to pay their fine as outlined above in the above poster that Judiciary has posted on their website.

This system is aimed at improving the delivery of justice as part of the on-going reforms in the judiciary plus increase speed of handling traffic cases.

Source: Kenya Judiciary; Pesatalk

Barclays Pingit comes to Kenya

 

Barclays Bank account holders in Kenya will now be able to receive money from their family and friends residing in the United Kingdom via their mobile phone.

This follows the launch of a mobile money transfer service dubbed 'Pingit' in February 2012 by the bank which will allow UK residents to send money from various bank accounts.

Speaking during the launch Barclays Bank Managing Director Adan Mohamed said all that is required from the sender is to download the Barclays PINGIT application on their smart phone and make the money transfers to anyone with a Barclays account in Kenya.

According to Adan, customers in Kenya on the other hand do not need to download anything. All they need to do is to have and account with Barclays, have their mobile handsets and mobile number from any service providers in the country. Therefore, a lot of conditions are in the UK side at the moment.

The maximum amount a UK customer can send to Kenya should not exceed £750 per day.

However, Kenyans cannot use the money transfer service to send money to UK.

The bank plans to rollout the service across 11 African countries and the UAE by the end of the year alongside further expansion into Europe in early 2013. This will include Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Uganda, UAE, Seychelles and Mauritius.

For UK Barclays Bank customers, the Pingit app is free to download and use on Android, Apple and Blackberry smart phones. For those without smartphones, they can register online to receive payments. 

Source: Allafrica.com, The Guardian

Orange 3G Internet Everywhere settings

After the nasty experience with Airtel last week, where I bough a weekly unlimited bundle for Ksh 750 and never got to enjoy Internet due to a technical hitch, I decided to purchase the Orange 3G Internet Everywhere modem.

It can be pretty frustrating when you start experiencing EDGE speeds, especially when the signal strength is pretty good where I reside. This almost led me to dialling up the Customer Care to ask the reason for the low speeds that never exceeded 100 kbps, till when I decided to do a Google search.

A very helpful hint came from Wazua.co.ke, and it is interesting to note that Orange is selling modems with a key parameter that affects adversely the Internet speeds experienced by its uses. Apparently its dial up parameter reads by default as *99#, which if changed to *99***1# automatically connects you on HSPA+, and enjoy speeds in the range of 1-2 mbps. Its better than being on EDGE, and am pragmatic enough I can never enjoy anything beyond 7.2 mbps, leave alone 21 mbps or the newly announced new speeds of up to 42 mbps.

The key setting are as below:

APN:bew.orange.co.ke
Access number *99***1#