Airtel, Ghana’s second national operator announced an upgrade of its cellular network to a newer/faster mobile broadband technology called 3.75G earlier this week. 3.75G, otherwise known as HSPA+, is the latest iteration of the 3G mobile broadband technology. The launch makes Airtel the pioneer of 3.75G in Ghana, and the fastest mobile broadband service in [...]

After several false starts, Glo Mobile Ghana appears to have taken its most remarkable step yet, towards a commercial launch. The cellular network obtained its operating licence since 2008 but had failed to launch its service to the public, citing logistical difficulties. Its last false start was 17th November 2011. A much-publicized commercial launch slated [...]

TEDxDzorwulu comes-up in Accra Ghana this Saturday 10th December 2011. Find the full press release from the organizers, below: On Saturday, December 10, 2010, from 8:00AM – 5PM GMT, the inaugural TEDxDzorwulu conference will be held at the African Regent Hotel in Accra Ghana on the theme: Think, Create and Innovate. TEDxDzorwulu will focus on [...]

Too many people in Africa happen to fall within the low-income bracket. Thus, one would expect budget airlines to be commonplace on this continent, catering for the masses. This is not so. Budget airlines are rather common in high-income countries of Western Europe, North America, India and many Asian countries. The relatively few airlines that [...]

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) launched in Ghana on 7th July 2011, enabling mobile subscribers to move from one mobile network to another, whilst still retaining their full mobile number. It has generated some buzz in the Ghana’s mobile communications sector with all the mobile providers offering mouth-watering incentives to woo subscribers from other networks whilst [...]

Esoko is an agricultural market information platform. It takes advantage of the explosive growth of mobile communication services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agri-business, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]