Following the launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana on 7th July 2011, the mobile networks all launched campaigns geared towards enticing mobile subscribers to port to their network. Newspaper ads, radio jingles and TV ads have taken the lead but since the internet is slowing going mainstream in Ghana, the leading mobile networks [...]

Infinity TV, a direct-to-home satellite TV service on Astra 2B has gone premium. Most of the channels they offer which have hitherto been free since early 2010 are now encrypted. This is not much of a surprise since Infinity TV had always set-out to be a premium service.

Esoko was founded in 2005 as TradeNet by Mark Davies, who also founded BusyInternet years ago. TradeNet was rebranded as Esoko in April 2009 and its investors are: Jim Forster, the International Finance Corporation, and the Soros Economic Development Fund.

It appears MTN failed to sufficiently communicate the new packages to its mobile broadband subscribers, early enough. Users have lost their airtime because they simply loaded airtime and continued browsing as usual, without actually subscribing to any data packages. Thus they were billed at the very high tariffs that MTN now charges outside the packages.

.gh is the country code Top-Level Domain name (cc-TLD) for the Republic of Ghana. Introduced in 1995, it is currently managed by a private company in Accra Ghana. This company sponsored the .gh domain with ICANN (the international body for managing domains) and currently serves as the registry and registrar, simultaneously. Although .gh is intended [...]

Google Plus is Google’s latest and best attempt at a social networking website. It obviously draws a lot of lessons from Google’s previous attempts like Google Buzz, Google Wave, Orkut etc. I got an invitation to join Google Plus from a good friend, and I am loving it so far. It comes with a lot [...]

This blog post is part of a series of blog posts focused on how to blog more effectively. In an earlier post in the Effective Blogging series, I made a case for why every blogger should have a mobile-friendly version of their blog. In this post, I would be highlighting how to make your blog [...]

Gregory Eid is the Managing Director of TeleData ICT, a leading Internet Service Provider in Ghana, targeted at individuals, cyber cafes and SMEs. In this interview, he spoke frankly to Russell Southwood of Balancing Act about some aspects of the operations of TeleData ICT, challenges of offering internet connectivity in Ghana and the network upgrade [...]

I was invited to cover the Tech Showcase of Esoko’s 3rd Annual Partner Conference. The Tech Showcase was a segment of the larger partners’ gathering. Esoko Partners are their international clients who have paid to use Esoko software in their respective countries. I was able to gather information that I would be sharing in the [...]

In case you missed the memo, Africa is rising. Having been largely ignored in the development of the Internet, things have been changing rapidly in the past decade with telecommunication companies forming alliances with financial institutions to bring serious data connectivity into Africa, and with it, lots of potential for prosperity. You can thus understand [...]

This blog post is part of a series of blog posts focused on how to blog more effectively. The Internet has evolved to a point where web access is no longer an exclusive preserve of desktop or laptop computers. A new demography has matured over the years and has since reached a critical mass that [...]

I granted the following video interview to ICTWorks.org in January 2011, and spoke about ICT for development, mobile communications, e-commerce, web hosting in Africa. Enjoy.

DStv is offering a major boost to residents of Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya who might be interested in their DStv Mobile service. Before now, the DStv Mobile had been restricted to a few mobile phones – these phones have in-built circuitry that enable them to receive and decode DVB-H signals. DStv is now offering [...]

I was a bit amused by a bold promise from MTN Ghana’s Facebook update recently: Dear All Thank you for your commendations .We are working hard to even give you much more better coverage for both voice and data services Indeed, MTN’s USD 90 million West African Cable System (WACS), the biggest in Africa, has [...]

Hints have floated in the Ghanaian media several times and each time, the dates have been moved forward. Despite acquiring a license to operate a mobile telecommunication network in Ghana since May 2008, going live to the general public has been a struggle on several fronts, for Glo Mobile Ghana Ltd. However, I am inclined [...]