The age of streaming is here! In the second week of January, Netflix announced that it had gone, mostly, global. Here in Kenya, the internet, by which I mean Twitter, immediately went wild with people making jokes (Netflix and chill anyone?) and giving opinions on whether it’ll work or not. iAfrikan itself had a post on the matter authored by Arthur Mwai, and it also discussed the topic at length on African Tech Roundup the companion podcast to the site, and an awesome listen, which was hosted by Andile, Tefo and their guest Emeka Okoye.

So I recently came across this InfoTaKe.

Users transferring money from Equity Bank’s Equitel Mobile Money platform have been hit by a more than 100% increase in the cost of transferring money from the platform to Safaricom’s M-Pesa. 

The new charges appear to have been implemented at the start of August, just as Equitel officially announced it’s transition from a pilot phase. No official communication on the new charges was relayed to Equitel users.

Once again, I’m back writing something about Safaricom. While most of the country, and the world, concentrates on M-PESA, I’d like to focus on something else, data.

From the figures below, we not only see that data revenues have not only exploded, but according to my back of the envelope calculations, they are set to approach those of M-PESA by the year 2020, and combined, will dwarf voice revenue by almost 100%; that’s less than 5 years from now. 

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about Safaricom’s 4G efforts. Well, not exactly their 4G efforts, but their set top box, ‘creatively’ called theBIGbox (in case it wasn’t clear, that’s sarcasm). In this post, I want to compare their offering to one of their competitors that always comes up every time anyone talks about Internet in Kenya, Zuku.

More often than not, when the two are compared, the better offering seems to be Zuku. But what everyone forgets in these comparisons is that Safaricom doesn’t have to compete with Zuku; at least not yet.

 Safaricom is launching their digital set-top box this Friday, 8th May, dubbed ‘The Box’. When they first announced it I was ultra excited for what it might mean for the current media landscape in Kenya. But before I get into that let’s see what features ‘The Box’ will have: powered by Android, in addition to being a television set top box, it’ll offer video on demand to also provide internet access to users through a 4G SIM and wireless hotspot capabilities and other services like gaming.

This weekend, Safaricom is moving their servers, which were in Germany, to Kenya. They’ve been harping this on their social channels as #mpesacomeshome. From their press release:

Early last year, we announced plans to migrate the M-PESA platform to Kenya. We can now confirm that faster transactions, improved stability and added functionality on M-PESA is a dream coming to life: M-PESA is coming home!
Here is what you will enjoy from the new M-PESA system:

Bob Collymore’s contract is up for renewal in 4 months, and he’s yet to hear from the board, of which he’s a part of, whether he’s coming back. From the Business Daily:

Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore has not heard from the company’s board of directors about the renewal of his employment contract, which expires in four months’ time. 

Mr Collymore’s contract ends in August, having been extended for two years in 2013. There is a strong expectation it will be renewed again in the absence of any overt succession planning.

I want to try something new guys, I want to try writing about one topic: Safaricom. Why? Because I’m interested in the company, it being the chief tech company in the country and the one with the largest market cap of 640 billion shillings.

This will be in the same vein as John Gruber who primarily writes about Apple as a company: giving insights, thought pieces, and theories on the company. So that’s what I want to try do too. Unlike him, though, I currently don’t have sources in Safaricom of any kind but if I keep at this, maybe, I’ll get some.

Are you audacious? This post is a constant reminder to be so over the top and courageous with my plans.

The product only works on tablets.
The VC: “Aren’t you concerned that tablets skew older, that most young people use phones, and isn’t your business depending on attracting young users?”
The entrepreneur: “Well, eh, uh etc.”
He talked for a long time, but he didn’t have an answer.
It pissed me off because the answer was obvious.
His game is going to be so incredible that it will sell tablets. Kids, adults, everyone is going to have to get one just to run this software.
Now, to pull this off you have to have a PhD in Chutzpah.

Safaricom is Kenya’s biggest company in almost every metric you could care to measure: revenue, profits, tax, users; all of these and more. And yet it’s probably the most complained about company after KPLC. In my family, we’re always complaining about how the network is down, data is down or 3G not working. Complaints about the cost of calls, data, and sending money over Mpesa are voiced every few days. Despite all this we stick with them, and I’m not entirely sure why.

The real reason net neutrality is right Yet another reason for net neutrality and I think one that supersedes them all. Not that the others are wrong but this one is particularly good. I’ve written about my own thoughts on neutrality here.

The ISPs and entertainment companies want to restrict the flow of the Internet for their own purposes. It would make some sense, if they had developed the Internet, but they didn’t. It was paid for by US taxpayers. It was a good investment, as long as it doesn’t get foreclosed on. Funny thing is I don’t remember when we took out a mortgage on the Internet from these guys?

Thigh butt It being a Friday, I think we can start on a light note. The moment I read this definition, someone came to mind :D. Urban dictionary often has hilarious definitions like this and sometimes they bring a smile to your face. Other times it’s disgusting. So it’s a bit of a hit or miss.

The ratio of thigh to butt on a woman; easily viewable by a visible “crease” between the thigh and butt. The thigh to butt ratio is larger based on the length of the crease

French journalist Camille Lepage killed in CAR While the world focuses on Nigeria’s missing girls, Sudan’s descent into civil war, let’s not forget the Central African Republic which has been suffering war for some time now from sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.

Security in CAR has deteriorated in recent months. Around a quarter of CAR’s 4.6 million population have fled their homes since conflict erupted in March 2013 between mainly Muslim and Christian militias.

How the Middle Class Lifestyle Became Unaffordable If you want to understand where the economy is headed and why it’s there, you need to read this. Seriously though, I need to move out of the middle class as soon as possible.

Why have the costs of a middle class lifestyle soared while income has stagnated? Though it is tempting to finger one ideologically convenient cause or another, there are four structural causes to this long-term trend:

Some time back, Safaricom, Kenya’s major carrier, had a promotion in which the main prize was 10 million bob (about 115,000 USD); doesn’t look like much converted into dollars. Nonetheless, I was convinced I’d win. Why? I had a feeling.

That feeling was wrong, obviously, but while I did have it, I wondered exactly what I’d do with such a large amount of money (felt it was large until I converted it into dollars, now it seems like peanuts). I made some basic plans that I now want to share with you guys.

Kenya Power is my country’s only power distributor. It has had the monopoly on the distribution and supply of power since independence, I think, when it was known as Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC).

Kenya Power is probably the most complained about company in the country, perhaps along with Safaricom. Power in the country can disappear at any moment for reasons that aren’t clear to anyone, and at times even to Kenya Power themselves when you call their helpline; and Kenyan’s have become so used to the power outages when it rains that in my house when the clouds start darkening take out our paraffin lamps in readiness for dark times (pun intended). Of course if this only happened in the rural areas it would not be such a problem, but it’s something that affects the entire country no matter where you stay.