The ForgetMeNot Africa stand was busy with a lot of interest from African operator’s looking to add value added services to their networks and we look forward to progressing with these in the coming months.

The conference opened with a keynote session looking at market conditions in Africa’s telecoms, in particular the impact of the global economy on the sector. Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain Africa presented his company as being customer-oriented rather than operating a network. Outsourcing, infrastructure sharing and partnerships are used by Zain to serve customers better and to be “smarter about how to invest”.

His presentation was followed by a debate between Ahmed Cisse (Deputy CEO of West African group Atlantique Telecom) , Ken Aigbinode (CEO of Nigerian CDMA operator Zoom Mobile), and Themba Kumalo (CEO of MTN Uganda). They discussed the impact of the global economic downturn on Africa’s telecoms markets. Mr Cisse said that his business was affected in the first half of 2009, but picked up in the second half of the year, with a 12% growth.

In the afternoon Geoff Goss from Celsys proposed ways to boost ARPU in a difficult climate. He argued rather than going through the pain and effort to save small amounts of OPEX, businesses would be better served focusing their time and energy into maximisng the value from current users. This can be done easily he added, by knowing your customer, innovating and focusing on what users want such as content.

The day finished with the AfricaCom Awards ceremony. ForgetMeNot Africa were nominated in the Best New Entrant category which was won by Dark Fibre and we wish them well on their success.

Lesotho’s highly literate population struggles to access vital information, such as
healthcare, travel and educational resources as according to the International
Telecommunication Union only 3.4 per cent of the population use the Internet.
Expanding the country’s access to email via entry level, low end mobile phones will
consequently improve access to information, communications with friends and family,
and trade.

Econet Telecom Lesotho is the first African mobile service operator to enable their
entire customer base to send and receive email via ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message
Optimiser service. The new service, which goes live on 28th September 2009,
enables Econet Telecom Lesotho to offer two-way email to their entire mobile
customer base, without the end user requiring any Internet access, device upgrades
or application downloads.

Mpine Tente Head of Department Retail and Customer Service of Econet Telecom
Lesotho said: “We are proud to be one of the first companies in Africa to significantly
improve the population’s access to email via ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message
Optimiser service which opens up email communications to our entire subscriber
base irrespective of what phone they are using. Our mobile phone customers can
now use email to share important information, communicate with family overseas or
friends in another country, or even do business with people just a few miles down the
road, all for the cost of a local SMS. Message Optimiser sends and receives emails
via SMS to any mobile phone.”

ForgetMeNot Africa is a specialist in unified messaging for telecommunications
operators. Their unique Handset Initiation (HI) technology bypasses the need for
Internet access and opens up the service to all mobile phone users, even those in
the remotest of areas.

Jeremy George, Chief Operating Officer of ForgetMeNot Africa commented:
“Currently Lesotho’s population has to share access to a little over 2,000 PCs
connected to the Internet, most of which are in urban areas. Availability of
smartphones, laptops and even fixed line Internet connections is very low for this
highly literate country. Using ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message Optimiser, Econet
Telecom Lesotho will bring mobile email to the entire Econet Telecom Lesotho
subscriber base of both post and prepay customers across the country. The service
will transform the country’s low grade mobile phones into a stepping stone across the
global digital divide.”

So it’s no surprise that according to a report by Strand Consulting, the primary source of operators VAS revenue is derived from SMS traffic, with only a small amount coming from data services.

However, increased network traffic is only one benefit of offering VAS. Smart operators realise that VAS also have an important role to play in building customer loyalty and reducing churn. By offering customers value added services which are relevant and useful to their subscriber base operators can build long-term loyalty and minimise the loss of revenue to churn.