The 7th East Africa Com Nairobi

Two weeks ago, I had a chance to attend the East Africa Com conference whose theme was “Re-engineering business model for East Africa digital economy”. This was a two day event but I was only to attend the last day which I must say was epic and I did my best to acquaint myself with the exhibitors and the listed speakers were talking about. The event also coupled up as a mobile marketing summit and was sponsored by Airtel, Safaricom, Orange and Spice. The points of address were; cloud computing, Winning LTE and broadband strategies, Efficiency & cost management, Service to empower rural telecoms, Joining the East African VAS revolution and Efficiency & cost management.

This is an annual series and it was the 7^th time it was happening in Kenya. I must say this was a well-planned event that achieved its intended target of being a perfect forum for all stakeholders in the region's telecoms, media and ICT industries. There were representatives from more alternative service providers; OTT players like (Google), broadcasters, content providers (like Universal music group), social media players, app developers, start-up entrepreneurs and more – all alongside the senior executives from major East Africa operators.

Well I received my invite as press (blogger) and as soon as I set foot at the venue I went straight up to what interested me as a mobile telecommunication junky…. Just as expected, I did not see much of consumer mobile telecommunication hardware such as Mobile phones, tablets, modems etc. But boy oh boy this place was happening like crazy!

The first stand to get my attention was by Giesecke & Devrient a company that is committed in the key concepts of security, innovation and trust where they provide services such as bank notes, cards and services as well as government services. Here I was able to see the evolution of security features on banknotes; I also got to see products and solutions for secure electronic payment transactions. When it comes to mobile telecommunications, they specialize in the manufacture of SIM cards.  They offer value added solutions for mobile service providers hence ensuring seamless communication with the consumer. I was fascinated by the variety of SIM cards available in the market i.e.  M2M (machine to machine),  STARSIM cards which are very cost effective, UniverSim which features an extra interface for contactless applications such as NFC, GalaxySim platform which boasts a fast USB interface and a multi-megabyte storage capacity and finally SkySim which is a versatile scalable Java SIM. I must say this booth was like a class to me given the fact that I am keen follower contactless applications such as NFC which are just in infancy.   

The next stand to stop at was by StreamWide which is a company that is all about next generation technology for mass market voice and video value added services. This was quite an interesting since they took their time to make me know exactly what they do. StreamWide basically is a company that designs and develops user interfaces that complement each of their consumer-oriented solutions. Through research and development they have been able to ensure that they adopted their platform from web interfaces to apps for all kinds of kinds of modern devices using the most current and proven research regarding simplicity, ease of use and comefortability. This is a company with a worldwide reach with offices; in the US, France, Tunisia, Romania and China. They offer full localization for their customers who need to adapt to their telephony call flows or digital interfaces to their local language. The most interesting of their services is the “My social line” which is a service for mobile service providers to offer end-users the best of both online and telecom worlds which accelerates usage and contributes as such to improve operators P&L. The virtual line service provides a “Virtual” telephony  number connected with existing customer accounts where the consumer can receive or make calls through virtual identity on current phone as well as place calls from virtual identity (through prefix, callback or network integration). They also offer the following social network features; Pre- built customizable Facebook application, Social-network-based self-care, click to call from Facebook, contact synchronization process as well as viral marketing. They also have a voicemail integration service where the user can be able to customize greeting by a Facebook contact. They offer next generation messaging solutions to service providers; Voicemail, Unified messaging, Visual Voicemail, Missed Call Alert, Voice SMS, Auto Attendant, Reachability Alert and Video Messaging. Finally, can you imagine the return of reverse calls just like back in the day (assuming you grew up in the 90s and back)? They do offer this feature under billing where it this service is to be acquired by any of the local service providers then we will be able to enjoy call collecting.

My third point of the stop was at CreaLog stand which is a company that targets service providers by offering value-added services and hosting of VXML applications to maximize on sales and increased customer loyalty. They offer mobile service providers a Carrier Grade VXML Media Server which can be easily integrated in existing network infrastructures and future architectures via open interfaces. I was able to experience the CreaVoice carrier grade VXML media server at work when I was taken through a bank transaction is Uganda which entailed checking for balance and funds transfer and I must say the localization is very impressive. The CreaVoice VXML Media Server (VMS) is an open platform for mass calling and VXML applications. As a next generation media portal it provides innovative dialogs with NLU speech recognition, voice biometrics and text-to-speech with a minimum development time. As I watched the and listened in an amazement, I could see a lot areas that service can be applied such as vertical integration in; TV & radio, Financial service providers, Health & Education, Retail, Travel and transportation, administration, suppliers and telemarketing.

As the day was coming to an end, I managed to visit Reve Systems booth which a company that specializes in the provision of carrier grade soft-switch & billing platform. Reves Systems serves customers in over 65 countries where it has more than 1250 Voip and telecommunication service providers. It is a Symbian foundation member, part of the iPhone developer community and the Nokia developer forum. Their application called iTell Mobile Dialer Xpress enables consumers and  businesses to originate calls and SMSs from their mobile phones, using IP networks. This is a plus for the consumers when it comes to making long distance calls. In order to use the dialer, all you need to do is download the app on their phone with minimal configuration.

I managed to attend a few informative presentations like a debate on whether East Africa needs LTE, an operator case study on provision of 3G networks in East Africa as well as a few presentations at the mobile marketing summit. Lucky for me and my readers, the event organizer has been able to upload the presentations on the portal where you can download them by following this LINK..