Mobile phones

Internet on Mobile Phones [Comium]

I got a chance to get a sneak peek at Comium's GPRS service this week, and it was super-cool. GPRS stands for General packet Radio Services, and is a technology that allows you to do things like use the Internet on your phone. I've been waiting for this forever - looks like Comium have finally gotten it. Right now it's apparently in testing mode, but they'll soon have it live so regular users can use it. This looks to be a big win for Comium, if it happens, and certainly a commendable improvement and a radical shift away from the "you bet ten million? I'll bet twenty" cellphone marketing mania that has hit the country. Not to mention depending on how expensive it is, it could potentially take the Internet into parts of the country where the ISPs don't reach.

The Cellphone Wars: Part 2

Marketing in The Gambia can be roughly divided into two epochs: the pre-Africell period (also known as the "stick a few billboards on the Banjul-Serekunda highway, do a few spots before the one-o-clock news on rajo gambia, hope we get noticed" period), and the post-Africell ("keep throwing everything you have at the wall - some of it will invariably stick, and even if it doesn't you'll at least get noticed") one. When Africell first opened up shop, they had the unenviable position of having to dislodge a firmly established market leader, and convince thousands of users to switch phone lines (with all the headaches that a change of numbers entails*). They reacted in (what would soon come to be regarded as) typical Africell style: throw enough marketing resources at a problem, and it'll go away.

All businesses are set up with one goal in mind: to get you, the customer, to hand over your hard-earned cash to them, for assorted goods and/or services.

The Gambian Cellphone Wars: Part 1

In the beginning, there were no cellphones.

Back then, the only way to talk to someone was either on a land-phone, yelling at them through the fence that separated you (if you were neighbors), or walking - running if they owed you money - over to their house. (If they were mobile at this time then you were pretty much out of luck - you did this complicated thing where you first called their house, then their grandmother's house, then their best friend's, then their girlfriend's, each time just missing them, until you gave up and just went out on the streets to see if maybe you could meet them face to face).

Face of Africell

Africell have been running a competition to 'discover the face of Africell', with first prize a new car, and second a trip to Paris. The winner also gets to be the full-time PR person for the company. There were judges who got to select the first round of 30 people, and now the public are allowed to vote using their mobile phones for who they think should win the competition.

More than 250 people turned up for preliminary auditions. The audition videos of the 30 people who got selected have been on GRTS TV the past three days, and they were really fun to watch. One thing I was pleased to discover was that the judges didn't choose based on proficiency at English alone, which too many times gets to be a problem over here, with people snobbing other people based on their (lack of) English-speaking skills, which is just plain silly, given that it's not even our language.