Press release: Umuntu Media relaunches the next version of www.iZambia.co.zm

Umuntu Media has launched the next version of the iZambia lifestyle portal, in the next step to deliver up to the minute local content that is immediately relevant to the needs of Zambians. iZambia.co.zm was launched in January 2011 and quickly grew to attract a significant following in the country.

iZambia was the first in a series of portals containing up to the minute information about entertainment, property, jobs, accommodation and news specifically relevant to people across Zambia. On the new iZambia you can find:

• Top local, internation, sport and entertainment news
• LIfestyle: Fashion, Food, Gadgets, Gossip, Health, Movies, Music, Relationships, Travel and TV
• What's on section
• Jobs: Manage your CV online, apply online, setup job alerts
• Property to buy and to rent
• Resturant guide
• Accomodation guide with online bookings
• Business directory
• Games
• Music and videos
• Social platform where you can create events, groups, share photos and video or find the love of your life

All this in your own portal for Zambia. Visit www.izambia.co.zm today.

Umuntu Media's iPortal series was born in response to a lack of local information that is immediately relevant to the people of Africa.

Johan Nel, CEO and founder of Umuntu Media says of the relaunch: "The relaunch of iZambia consolidates our position as the fastest growing online publisher in Africa. From the start we saw tremendous growth in uptake of the portal, clearly demonstrating the need to generate comprehensive, updated and locally relevant content to people across Africa.”

Umuntu Media will soon be launching Mimiboard, a social media tool designed in Africa by Africans for Africa. The platform will be launched in alpha version in January 2012.

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For more information, contact Johan Nel, Umuntu Media, johan.nel@umuntumedia.com

About Umuntu Media

Umuntu Media exists because we love Africa, we love technology and we have a passion for local content.

With just one registered domain per 10 000 people on a continent with over a billion people, we are filling a significant gap in Africa.

With a background in media and online publishing, our CEO and founder Johan Nel saw that gap while researching local information for a family holiday in Namibia in 2009. Our journey started with a very simple mission: to deliver relevant local content on world class platforms across the continent.

In September 2010, with support from the Dutch investment firm, eVentures Africa Fund, our business plan expanded from a single portal for Namibia to multiple portals across Africa.

The winning iPortal formula encapsulates our passion: to bring relevant local content to people who want to know what’s going on in their area, all day, every day. Keeping true to our promise of getting Africa online, we remain focused on our ambitious growth plan to deliver thirteen local content portals by April 2012.

We are also rolling out Mimiboard, a mobile communications platform created in Africa, for Africa, designed to cater for Africa’s local content needs.

Our business is driven by certain key principles. Always question the norm. Never be boring. And always embrace new technology to directly serve the market that wants it. After all, a publisher that owns a tech platform is the publisher of the future.

About eVentures Africa Fund

eVentures Africa Fund (eVA Fund) is dedicated to mobilize capital and experience in the Netherlands/Europe to invest in small and medium sized African internet and mobile related companies. eVA Fund focuses on development in terms of capital and business development support, i.e. knowledge, experience, access to proven business concepts/applications, and network.

The target region is sub-Saharan Africa. Website: www.eva-fund.com

WEDNESDAY BOYCOTT

Airtel Zambia this week showed arrogance and ignorance when over 15,000 subscribers boycotted Airtel services. Instead of responding to the specific issues that the subscribers raised, which were communicated to them and were also aired on radio, television, in the newspaper as well as on the internet, it was interesting to note that all Airtel management could say was, “we will call you back” and in another instance all they could say was “we value the opinions of our subscribers.

Indeed, everyone’s opinion is to be valued and there’s is no law against that. But when you are dealing with a group of subscribers who pay you for a service, it is no longer an issue of opinion, but an entitlement of the subscriber that you respond with an explanation for each separate issue raised, unless of course you deem yourself as doing the subscriber a favor.

As I sat on my laptop in my house in Kafue, I read the comments of discontent subscribers and I realized that the problem with Airtel is that they do not value the customer. They just want money. However, that has to change. Because we are already paying them money, we just have to sit them down and show them what we want till they oblige.

We need to see an improvement in Airtel’s overall customer care policy, going beyond lip service and actualizing those promises to ensure that customers feel that they are not being cheated out of their hard earned cash by this Indian corporation.

A piece of advice to Airtel is that if you continue to underestimate and disparage the source of your income, we the people have the capacity to incapacitate you and help you pack out of business. It should be understood clearly that Airtel was not here before, and tomorrow we can make sure that it no longer is here. This is a subscriber’s threat.

Airtel is not the “boss”. The subscribers are. If they complain about the quality of service that they are receiving and those issues fall on deaf ears, there are two things that will most likely happen. Firstly, the subscribers will continue to de-campaign Airtel and probably move to competing providers.

Secondly they can sue Airtel for obtaining money by false pretences. Airtel has misrepresented promotions, products, and services hence collecting large sums of money through talk time use and cash purchases. It must be understood further that the idea of suing Airtel would be supported by many thousands of people who have witnessed these misdeeds on the part of Airtel.

Some of the issues that subscribers have raised include the competitions such as the one where subscribers are promised that one of them would win K10m each day if subscribers would enter a competition by sending a text message to a certain short code. Those text messages cost about K3000 each. It is believed that no one has ever won that competition hence Airtel has been pocketing that money from the competition.

Airtel is in the habit of changing the terms of competitions or promotions such as Cheza without explicitly communicating to subscribers who have opted in with the ulterior intention to make more money from the same unsuspecting subscribers. Recently Airtel increased the charge on Cheza from K2 to K5 without informing the subscribers explicitly. Airtel claims that they had places adverts in the newspaper. The question is how many of the 4 million subscribers read the newspaper that carried those announcements?

Airtel further contended that they were giving 100 sms over weekend for the numbers that are enrolled for the Cheza program. However, subscribers wondered what an individual needs 100 sms for over 2 days especially that you can only sms the same number. Hence the justification given by Airtel’s customer care crew that visited my house in Kafue on Tuesday 8 November was flimsy and inordinate.

Internet bundles are also excessively expensive on Airtel. Meanwhile their 3G is slow and below world class standards. This is unacceptable in a country that is desperate to develop and reduce the cost of business in order to promote wealth creation.

I have written on this BlogSpot before how that Airtel’s 100MB is 3 times more expensive than Cell C’s 100MB bundle. My internet connection for instance is unlimited for which I pay $87 on Microlink. This is still very expensive compared to similar services in other countries. However, with my average usage of 8 to 10GB per month, I would be paying in excess of $250 on Airtel accompanied with an unreliable delivery and poor service support.

That brings us to the quality of customer care services that Airtel subjects it customers to. This alone would warrant suspension of the operating license of this service provider in developed nations. Customer care is the epicenter of customer satisfaction but it seems that Airtel use that for customer provocation.

Their customer care crew is clearly untrained and has adopted an attitude that is designed to provoke customers and cause increased dissatisfaction. The complaints related to bad customer care experiences are so many that believably, if sorted, that alone may indicate willingness on the part of Airtel to make its customers happy.

However, it is understandable that they would not have the capacity to do that, as we saw in their response to the last boycott that they just don’t really care about us.

This is why the Wednesday Boycott will continue this week 16th November, as we grow numbers, get more on to the ground get more organized and continue to demand for investors to deliver a morally acceptable service both in terms of quality and in terms of pricing.

The mission of this Wednesday boycott is to press an order for quality services of a world class standard at the price that is right regardless of the sector in order to promote development and raise Zambia’s standard of services in general.

To Airtel the world is watching, the customers are standing up, and the nation is listening.

Boycott Airtel services on Wednesday, 9th November, 2011

Thousands of Airtel subscribers have agreed to boycott Airtel on Wednesday 9th November, 2011 in order to force Airtel improve its customer care services and it’s pricing. Check following link: FACEBOOK EVENT

In this press release therefore we inform the nation that all customers of Airtel are being called upon to join this boycott which we believe will force Airtel to improve their services. The boycott will start at 08:00 hrs and run for 9 hours until 17:00hrs.

If Airtel does not pay attention to our civilized action, we will use word of mouth, social media, sms, and every means possible including conventional media to raise public awareness and support every week, every Wednesday until Airtel eventually listens.

As customers we feel that ZICTA has not done enough and they will probably not do anything to enforce fair service delivery from Airtel in this regard unless they realize that customers themselves are serious about getting what is good for their money.

Among many issues affecting Airtel customer are high cost of internet bundles, poor customer care services, hidden as well as unjustified charges such as charges placed on finding out your missed calls, unexplained technical errors and failures among a myriad of service irregularities.

We appeal to individuals as well as companies that use Airtel services to simply NOT make any call or send any sms during the stipulated time. If you have internet bundles you may continue using Airtel internet since it will be wasted if you do not use it.

In order to make phone calls, please if possible simply get an MTN or Zamtel simcard for the day (and for the future boycotts should Airtel not pay attention). You may also keep your phone on in order to receive phone calls.

Thank you for your supportFor world class services

Coach Brian Matambo

0979360027

Why Zambia is desperate for ICT

Communication underpins democracy and economic growth. The problem with the world economies today is ignorance. People prefer cooking up figures and projections that can be supported by an academic formula as opposed to acquiring truth. That is “by the way". However, truth, transparency, freedom of expression, knowledge, conversation, information, communication and technology today is vital to economic growth and to democracy.

Now therefore what role does mobile phone technology and internet play in economic growth? Zambia is a great democratic example to the world. But it is still an economic pity. After improving our credit rating to lower middle income, and after recording year after year statistical economic growth, and after holding the inflation rate in single digits, why is it that these positive achievements do not seem to trickle down to people either in the streets and worse still in the rural areas.

The problem with Zambia is basically communication. Successive governments have failed to put up policy that would exploit the economic potential of the ICT sector. ICT is the critical vehicle of creating, communicating, delivering, and harnessing economic development.

There will be several reasons that economists and academic analysts will point to, but with careful consideration, we can safely say that the wider maximization of ICT would largely answer those questions. For example, ignorance and lack of education can be answered by delivering world class education to children in the rural that is accessed by any child anywhere else in the most developed world using ICT.

Lack of tertiary and skills training due to lack of financing can be solved by delivering training in remote places using technology. Small businesses that cannot afford large marketing budgets can use ICT platforms such social media to grow their brand and be well on their well to growth and profitability.

There are very few questions that information technology will not be able to answer positively today. It is still shocking that the Government does not have a clear ICT policy. Particularly the PF government does not have any real plans to exploit ICT for education and business.

Even though people are now not too sure if President Michael Sata is really allergic to corruption, the people of Zambia have long enough been disadvantaged by corruption at all levels. Corruption will not be dealt with effectively unless we employ technology in ensuring transparency, accuracy, and standard.

Zambia development capacity will move considerably and significantly the moment we have ICT policies in place.

Who is going to be the first one to make things right: Airtel, MTN and Zamtel?

Airtel has lately being at the receiving end of customer and public rebuke following network service failure such as airtime top up, royalty points, the promised 3G internet service among other things. On the other hand MTN and Zamtel seem to benefit from the problems that their competitor is having as customer claim switching to from Airtel.

QUALITY OF SERVICE

The quality of service in the mobile phone sector leaves much to be desired.

To start with, some of these service providers make promises that they end up failing to fulfill. For instance, the royalty programme by Airtel is a complete sham. Most people with gold level points have not received their gold status cards and hence they are unable to enjoy the benefits of being a high user on the network as promised by the service provider.

These days it is nearly impossible to get your points redeemed into sms or minutes. It appears the system is experiencing terminal failure. Unless you call (and get lucky to be answered), your need for redeeming sms or reward minutes would expire whilst you try in futility.

Faults are normal in any technology based business, but communication with clients in such instances can mitigate a crisis of customer infuriation. This is where our service providers worsen the problem.

Zambian mobile service providers need to improve their customer care services. It is rare that your call to 111 would be answered within 2 minutes. You will have to try several times before you are placed on hold for longest possible time, and if the call doesn’t cut then you may manage to speak to a customer care assistant, who will most likely not solve your problem but instead ask you to try accessing the service in question after 2 hours.

In the 21^st century, in a liberal economy, driven boldly by the market, service providers carry on heedlessly exploiting customers. If these companies do not make changes their days are definitely numbered. The question is who is going to get 90% of the market by doing what customers want. Who is going to leverage the grievances of the customer to gain a larger market share?

COST OF SERVICES

The cost of mobile phone services in Zambia is a perfect reflection of social and economic injustice. Most of these providers are too lazy to expand their market reach and hence they want to maximize the smaller segment they service for exorbitant profits. This kind of exploitation has adverse effects on the economy.

The cost of a call is still essentially high. The cost of data on the other hand is even worse. At a time when we should be broadening the use of ICT and data services in Zambia, our service providers seem not to understand the simple economics of it. If it’s affordable people will use it. But just because people are using it doesn’t mean you have to make it more expensive.

ZICTA must intervene and demand an outright reduction for data services costs as well as an improvement in the delivery of the same.

Cell C of South Africa offers 100MB at US$6.18 which is valid for 30 Days. Airtel Zambia offers 100MB at US$17. Why is it that Zambia, where the income levels are lower than in South Africa, and where the market is widely untapped, is where the cost is over 175% higher than South Africa? In the USA you will receive unlimited internet plus download for a month at US$15.

Why are Airtel, MTN, and Zamtel exploiting Zambians?

THE IMPORTANCE OF PUTTING THINGS RIGHT

We are at a time in Zambia when we need to reduce the cost of doing business and the cost of living. That is the only way we are going to improve the standard of life in this country. Communication is vital for business, education, industry and development. It is probably going to take one of these service providers taking service delivery to world class standards and making the cost level with the developed world that those who have been shunning data service will begin to jump on course.

The service provider who adheres will get more customers moving over to get a better quality service at the right cost.

The country will benefit because now the economy can see resources released to enhance business and education, resources that are currently stifled because of poor internet at high costs. If not, people will soon move to fixed internet (with the advent of fibre optics) and mobile phone providers will be white elephants. After all VOIP at high speeds can render mobile phone services unnecessary, unless otherwise.

Google picks Mobile as model for mobile business

Google Inc. went far from its California headquarters to make an Alabama city its model in a new campaign to help businesses build better websites for mobile devices. The alliteration, Mobilizing Mobile, was simply too good to pass up.

It doesn't matter that mobile and Mobile (moh-BEEL) are pronounced differently.

Google spokeswoman Sandra Heikkinen said some executives in Mountain View, Calif., are still practicing the pronunciation of the city, but "we love the alliteration."

The search giant is planning a series of events and workshops in Mobile from Nov. 14-16 to help businesses build a presence on the mobile Internet and get new customers. Participants will have the opportunity to have their desktop websites developed for portable devices like smart phones and tablets the same day as the workshop. It can tell potential customers their location, phone number, hours of operation and other information designed to drive business.

"Someone can find them that afternoon," said Jason Spero, Google's director of mobile advertising for the Americas.

For Google, it's part of an international effort, GoMo, to get more businesses using mobile sites.

For Mobile, it's an opportunity for businesses to get their sites developed and hosted free for a year. It's also an opportunity for the city to turn a digital search disadvantage into an advantage.

Leigh Perry Herndon, vice president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, said people who type Mobile into an Internet search often get more information about telecommunications companies than they do the port city in Alabama. But now that spelling problem has brought Google to the city.

"This is one of those benefits of having a name that sounds like something else," she said.

Google executives said that while Mobile's name made it attractive, research made it a cinch. They found a city with a diverse range of businesses and a tech-savvy population with heavy broadband use, but lots of potential for development with mobile devices.

Herndon said many Mobile businesses have developed websites aimed at desktop computer users, but they have not adapted to the small screens of smartphones. She said Google is giving businesses a way to get with the latest trend in finding business information.

"You have an opportunity to get on board or you find your website outdated," she said.

Spero figures people with smart phones in Mobile are like people everywhere: They carry their phones with them all the time and they want to navigate the digital world from their phones.

"I truly believe this is driving a sociological change," he said.

Internet: A human right

Communication is the basis of human interaction. We know this to be inherent. But in an age where information is leveraged for advantage definitely communication is fundamental. This is probably one of the main reasons why the U.N.’s Commission for Digital Development aims to have broadband available to half of the world’s developing countries by 2015.

The call to make broadband accessible to minimum of 40% of the population must not fall on deaf ears here in Zambia. Zambia must act decisively to be one of the best implementers of this challenge.

There are three main challenges internet service delivery faces in Zambia.

1. Cost of broadband is prohibitive in Zambia. Users pay an average of US$25 per gig per month. Internet costs go up to US$600 per month for speed around 125kpbs. Hopefully this will be solved by ensuring that more that 40% of the population has access to broadband internet.

2. Speed of internet connectivity is in Zambia is believed to be the 4th slowest in the world. This is another factor depriving users of a standard online experience. Government must prioritize the laying of fiber optics as this may solve the speed problem.

We need to be a country with our own internal fiber optics network to promote hosting of websites locally and enhance local connectivity.

3. Zambian content on the internet is scarce. This scarcity deprives users looking for information for business and education. This also needs to be sorted out expeditiously.

Reflecting on the message that the UN is sending on the need to acknowledge internet as a human right, it must be understood that internet is government’s duty. Internet is the way to reduce the cost of business. Internet can help curb corruption and enhance transparency. Internet is a must in order to give citizens access to information.

Suggestively, members of parliament must be trained regarding the importance of internet and broadband. Law makers must understand that should government maximize broadband, development can be delivered better, faster, and more effectively.

Government should not only embrace ICT. It must lead in making Zambia a connected nation. There has to be more than political will. There has to be policy in place to ensure that Zambia is a country that is in step with ICT.

The benefits of a connected nation transcend the simple ensamples of providing people with access to research material for business and education. Connectedness means that companies will be able to reduce their marketing cost, reach a wider market, and even improve delivery. Individuals will be able to study online, stay connected with family and friends, whilst also find and exploiting business opportunities.

Most importantly government itself in this connectedness policy will be able to consolidate its data and manage information better.

Here are the 5 points of the Broadband Challenge

1. We call on world leaders to ensure that at least half the developing world’s population and 40% of households in developing countries are using broadband Internet by 2015. Consumers in all countries should have access to affordable broadband Internet services, including in developing countries.

2. We call on industry to develop innovative business models needed to realize this vision.

3. We call on governments to make broadband policy universal and to develop the enabling policy and regulatory frameworks to ensure that industry has a stable regulatory space in which to operate, flourish and harness broadband for sustainable human development.

4. We call on governments to develop policies and targets for online health and education at the national level to stimulate demand for broadband services.

5. We call on governments and civil society within a fully inclusive and consultative process to stimulate local content production as well as the development of local language services and applications for an inclusive digital world.