ERICSSON/ALCATEL BATTLE FOR KENYA'S 4G NETWORK

Ericsson has shocked government types and telecom players by proposing to build a country-wide 4G network for free threatening to scuttle a consortium of the Safaricoms and Airtels of this world and equipment makers Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent that has won the right to build the network.

Ericsson had slept during tendering and missed out on bidding. Only after a consortium of 10 players (Safaricom, Airtel, Orange, Essar (yu), KDN, MTN, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Epesi Communications and the Kenya government) won the tender did Ericsson wake up.

Essentially, the consortium, through a special purpose vehicle that has received approval from Treasury, is to set up an escrow account where the shareholders will deposit their contributions to the project.

The exact cost is yet to be established although a preliminary figure of US$100million (Sh8.4billion) had been floated for the first phase of the project.

The telcos will presumably also provide their masts and base stations under a shared-infrastructure model while the equipment makers will agree on how to roll out the network. (an initial agreement between Alcatel and Siemens was dismissed as unworkable as they wanted to halve the work essentially building a network that is half Alcatel and half Siemens. They are now said to be seeking a better working formula).

Ericsson now wants to crash the party. It is saying it can foot the bill for the entire project and repay itself over 15 years or so. It argues that rather than ask telcos and taxpayers to come up with cash for the project, it can bank roll the project and then operate the network.

Ericsson it trying to team up with one of the consortium members, Epesi Communications, which touts itself as an American outfit, although Google searches for it yield preciously little and is said to be fronted by a Kenyan going by the name of Munene.

Predictably, Alcatel-Lucent and Siemens are against this as they will stand to lose lucrative supply deals.


Africa being the fastest growing mobile market in the world has attracted all the major infrastructure companies from Ericsson to Siemens, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, ZTE and so on.


Huawei and ZTE have suffered because they have very close relationships with two of the telcos in the country, Safaricom for Huawei and Orange for ZTE. As such, the other consortium members do not fancy them in the mix.

But this is the kind of issue that finds its way to parliament and suddenly accusations of government spending money when an offer to have the entire network built with no money upfront is on the table.

There is no word as to whether Ericsson's bid will be taken seriously or what their next move is but indications are that their offer has been rebuffed for now with the polite reminder that they did not participate in the bidding round.

Another unhappy camper is Safaricom. The listed telecom would have loved to roll out the network on its own but spectrum constraints cannot allow this.

It is also unhappy that KDN and MTN could use the new network to offer voice services according to people in the know.

Also, the network will be on an open access model meaning even those entities that are not part of the consortium can lease capacity on the network but essentially, it also means that all operators will have the same coverage countrywide when it comes to 4G.

4G's main beneficiary is video in the same way 3G is data and 2G voice. By 2020, it is expected that 5G technology will be rolling out with much of data traffic expected to come from smart devices like home appliances rather than phones and tablets. IPv6 will allow billions of devices to have their own IP addresses.

The escrow account for the consortium was to be opened this week.

THIEVING QUACK JOURNALIST UNMASKED VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

The reported Luke Githinji

A thieving quack who lifted an iPad at a BPO function recently was unmasked on social media yesterday.

After his picture was circulated to media houses and subsequently on the net, one Robert Alai, not known to mince words wrote:

Robert Alai ‏@RobertAlai

The iPad thief highlighted in this blog post is called Luke Githinji. His number is 0712978119 http://bit.ly/KxuJzI - RT Pls

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As of writing this post, there had been 29 retweets including by the Kenya Police official twitter account.

 Left is the picture he uses on Facebook. Given by his account, this must be when he graduated from the Kenya Institute of Media and Technology, yeah, I know you are asking (Where the hell is that?)

I don't know.

The man's motives aside, the bigger issue here that needs to be addressed is the growing armies of quacks who invade functions sometimes outnumbering guests and end up either stealing, extorting money, drinking themselves silly or basically making the journalism fraternity look bad.

Shown there is a screenshot of Mr. Githinji's Facebook page. 

He seems a recent entrant, or an introvert. He has 69 friends.

QUACKS

The business journalism field is the worst hit by this problem.

Nowadays, genuine reporters at a function will normally make up about 30 per cent, the rest being unknowns who give no value to the host and end up demanding favours for work not delivered. Some have become well known and perhaps it is time that the fraternity did what the political desks did some years back.

To hear it from veterans, two notorious quacks had taken to impersonating legit political journalists, appearing at functions and extorting politicians in other people's names.

THE UNMASKING

Then, social media was not around to unhood the likes of our friend Luke. The politicos decided to use another tactic. 

At different subsequent functions, camera men and photographers were asked to train their lenses on the two and make sure they got good shots. 

When they were sure they had enough footage, they put together a story to be aired and ran cautioning on two masqueraders roaming the town.

The two fellas promptly went underground.

BUSINESS PRESS, CLIENTS AND PR AGENCIES

There is need now, for action to be taken and it has to be done in concert with the three most affected parties, the business desks, clients they cover and the agencies who bring the two together.

A collaborative effort to unmask these quacks and circulate their pictures and profiles both to clients, and PR agencies and to the police if necessary is needed to clean up the industry and restore the good name of the business press.

Over to you!

SAFARICOM TAGS OGILVY, TELL-EM, APEX AND SILVER BULLET FOR PR ACCOUNT

Ogilvy Kenya, Tell-Em, Apex Porter Novelli and Silver Bullet have been shortlisted to pitch for Safaricom's Sh2million a month PR & Events account.

Gina Din CC which has handled the account for the last decade opted not to bid for it as CEO Gina Din-Kariuki focuses her attention on specialized international clients and also prepares to play in the Oil and Gas sector with her appointment as the local partner of CAMAC Energy, an explorer with several off-shore blocks in Kenya.

Head to head, Ogilvy seems to tower over the others given the accounts it handles, it personnel and the fact that its a Scanad brand.

It has big clients such as Kenya Airways, Kenya Tourist Board, UAP Insurance, Tullow Oil and KCB and some of its personnel like Catherine Karanja, Tony Kago, Esther Sserwanga, Duncan Ondigo and so on have several years experience in corporate advisory work and other client services.

Others like Henry Ndirangu and King'ori Choto are newsroom veterans turned communications specialists while Francis Ochieng' and Nick Thiong'o are ex-Gina Din CC staff and have worked with Safaricom in the past.

But without doubt the biggest question mark with be the exit of Ogilvy MD Okoth "JJ" Obado from the helm of the firm he has led since 2004. JJ who commands fierce loyalty from his staff is known for his style of letting his employees "work."

"When he gives you a job, he gives you a job," said one. Yet another: "He is a leader." 

That he will be exiting is one thing, that his replacement will be Nick Wachira, the outgoing Managing Editor of the East African will no doubt raise eyebrows.

Where J is praised for his people management skills, Wachira is not. In fact, the opposite is said to be the case and that he is difficult to work with. Nonetheless, he does get results having launched the Daily Nation pullouts, Smart Company and Money some years back, the Business Daily as first Managing Editor and now at East African.

The firm has had a very low attrition rate at the top (only Anthony Mwangi- previously Head of Clients Services and now Obado have left) and will be watched closely for any if at all, departures after this.

Tell-Em PR, associated with former Information Minister Mutahi Kagwe, has not been as visible as it used to be in the past when Emily Kaiga (now Head of Communications - Standard Chartered Bank) used to represent the likes of Nokia.

But it is still no pushover and its impressive array of accounts is testament to that - Visa, Intel, Brookside, General Electric, Chartis Insurance, Sameer, Pine Bridge Investments and so on.

It also gave Safaricom its current PR Manager, Ann Nderi.

Apex Porter Novelli is quite surprising in this list as it has tended to go for public sector contracts and has represented the Ministry of Planning, Kenya Census 2009, the East African Community, Unilever, USAID and so on.

Known as Apex Communications in the past it became a network partner to global communications firm Porter Novelli.

Silver Bullet on the other hand is no sleeper although it has lost some veteran names recently. It represents the likes of Coop Bank, Ecobank, Toyota, APA Insurance, Jetlink and so on.

It however lost the highly effective Lilian Nganda to Hill and Knowlton, a brand that has acquired some of the best upcoming PR minds recently, and Sylvia Luseno to Media Edge. Brenda Khaimia, another of the Silver Bullet girls left to join Blueprint.

It is surprising that some firms are not on this shortlist.

Hill and Knowlton, probably the best positioned to handle this job given it not only has two seasoned Safaricom handlers in Rodgers Wabito and Cedric Lumiti but it has done a much better job of replacing departures of the likes of Solomon Mahinda chose not to pitch.

It has in addition to Nganda, hired former Apex, AccessKenya and Scanad PR's Michele Anekeya and has a large pool of upcoming PR minds.

Equally impressive is Africa Practice with an illustrious list of clients such as Google, Research In Motion, Multichoice, Diageo, CNN and so on and a number of seasoned PR minds such as Joan Kiambati and Mukami Muriuki and has recently tapped the talents of Capital FM Business Editor Evelyn Njoroge.

GOOGLE GIVES iHUB SH28MILLION

Search-advertising giant Google has announced a Sh28million funding to iHub and KENET the former an innovation hub and the latter an organization that provides internet access for tertiary institutions.


iHub will use the money to expand its work with application developers who in turn may come up with innovations that enrich the Android platform.


KENET on the other hand will continue to "connect educational institutions with a private, affordable high speed Internet."


Both of course fit into Google's mission: - To organize the  the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. 


In these parts of the world, information is either still snaking its way from print and handwritten materials to electronic format or has not even been documented yet.


A simple search of things associated with our cultures will yield little on the net whether on Wikipedia or on the web in general.


Applications, especially mobile applications such as those developed at iHub, tend to increase human interaction and therefore generate content. Google wants to organize that content.


Academic halls of course are a logical fit for Google as this is where information is of necessity, exchanged.

TULLOW STRIKES OIL IN KENYA

Tullow Oil has confirmed that it struck oil in its Turkana Block 10BB. The discovery was made last year but the company had said it would give a briefing on the progress in May.


The confirmation was done by President Mwai Kibaki. The Ministry of Energy will at 4PM give an press briefing on the same.


Even better, this is light crude oil as compared to Uganda's heavy crude that is usually solid at room temperature.


Tullow is the same company that discovered oil in Uganda. 



In stunning fashion, the fortunes of once vast and desolate wasteland thas is Turkana seem to be changing by the day.


In the same county, Africa's largest wind farm project is to be built to generate 300MW of power that will be transmitted to the national grid.


Geothermal potential is being explored with indications that we could get substantial energy there.


The massive LAPSSET project is set to pass there with rail, road and pipeline.


Tullow Oil shares were boosted by the announcement in London.

Tullow's exploration director Angus McCoss said:

"This is an excellent start to our major exploration campaign in the East African rift basins of Kenya and Ethiopia. to make such a good oil discovery in our first well is beyond our expectations and bodes well for the material programme ahead of us."

THE BIG ONE: KQ - TITUS NAIKUNI TO EXIT KENYA AIRWAYS

Titus Naikuni.

Titus Naikuni, the 6 foot 3 inch tall CEO of Kenya Airways is set to leave the company sometime this year, it has emerged. Reports indicate he could be headed for a career in politics with some pundits mentioning the Kajiado governorship as a possible next stop.


Naikuni, CEO since February 2003, reportedly will be succeeded by Mbuvi Ngunze, the current Chief Operations Officer who joined KQ in August last year.


Timelines are not clear but quite likely, Naikuni will steer the company's ongoing Sh21billion rights issue before making an official announcement.


Like Michael Joseph when he headed Safaricom or James Mwangi at Equity Bank, Naikuni is viewed as virtually synonymous with Kenya Airways and it is hard to imagine the airline without him at the helm.


But Ngunze comes with impressive credentials and the management team is quite vibrant. Ngunze is a Lafarge alumni having held various senior positions at Bamburi and Lafarge group.


As CEO Titus Naikuni has never been known to suffer fools gladly or have the patience for them. It is only until recently that Naikuni has eased up and relaxed somewhat and seems not to take things as seriously as he did before.


A member of the dream team of technocrats as PS Transport between 1999-2001, Naikuni served with among others Martin Oduor-Otieno, currently CEO KCB Group, Mwaghazi Mwachofi, the current Finance Director of the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance in Geneva, Richard Leakey, Shem Migot-Adholla and Wilfred Mwangi.


Naikuni's departure comes at a time when the company has launched a 10-year business plan that will see it treble its fleet with an emphasis on Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Boeing 777s for its long-haul fleet along with 737s and Embraer 190s.


It will also seek to raise over US$3billion for purchase of aircraft beginning with the Sh21billion rights issue that will cater for deposits for its first Dreamliners set to be delivered over 2013/2014.


Boeing requires deposits for planes to be made 24-month ahead of delivery time.


Government and KLM have committed to taking up their rights amounting to 49 per cent while institutional investors are also said to have expressed strong interest. 


A successful rights issue will also shore up the airline's balance sheet allowing it to leverage it for borrowing from banks.


The airline is also said to be set to launch a regional airline, Jambo Jet, which will cater to a changing market that now features an increasing number of travelling businessmen as opposed to the tourists who have previously formed the bulk of its business regionally.


A cargo business has also been started as the airline seeks to capitalize on the flow of goods from the Far East into the African continent as well as Jomo Kenyatta International Airport's emergence as the busiest cargo airport in Africa after surpassing Cairo and Johannesburg.


KQ for those who know it has a simple business plan. It uses its regional flights to bring passengers from all over the continent and loads them onto long haul jets that take it to far flung destinations like Bangkok, Gouangzhou and the like. It then does the reverse bringing in travellers from around the globe and putting them in 737s and Embraers that take them into African capitals.


The airline plans to build the most extensive network on the continent making it the undisputed leader and use Dreamliners to take them to any part of the world.


For instance when its workers went on strike some time back, operations in West Africa, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire and the like were severely disrupted given KQ's grip on international air travel in the region.


Titus Naikuni is known for his biting remarks and sarcastic wit particularly when shooting down reporters' questions when he feels they are ill-informed or ambigous.


One time a reporter asked him when Pride Center, its training and simulation facility would open yet it was already operational.


"Pride Center is already open, in fact it is old, it needs paint."


Naikuni, 59, sits on several boards including Maersk Kenya, AccessKenya, East Africa Portland Cement and Magadi Soda.


One thing he was yet to do was to reform the corporate culture at the airline. Like Safaricom and KCB, some feel it is now time for a major restructuring of the airline to streamline the way it does business and align its personnel skills to better support its growth strategy.

KDN, TELKOM KENYA, KPLC CABLE CUTS DOWN INTERNET IN KENYA

Fiber cables

A road contractor has cut underground fiber cables belonging to Kenya Data Networks and Telkom Kenya near Jomvu seriously affecting internet services in Kenya. To make matters worse, KPLC dark fiber that many ISPs and telecoms use between Nairobi and Mombasa was also cut near Mombasa when alleged scrap metal vultures vandalized a pylon.

The result is that internet services have been intermittent as carriers scramble to seek alternative routes.

Currently, big carriers like Safaricom are relying on the government-owned National Optic Fiber Internet Backbone (NOFBI).

Telkom Kenya has already reportedly come back on line and KDN is said to have told clients it expects to be back up in about two hours time.

Players have renewed their calls for a bill imposing stiff penalties on vandals and careless road contractors who cut crucial infrastructure like telecommunication and power lines.

As soon as it is passed, telcos are said to be waiting to swoop down on contractors with a vengeance.

The disruption comes at a time when the country's outbound traffic is being channelled through Seacom because TEAMS was cut by a ship's anchor at the coast and is undergoing repair while Eassy is being repaired for a cut near Djibouti.

Also said to be affected was the Reuters Currency Dealing System at local banks which crippled trade with the Shilling exchanging at around 82.40 to the dollar.

Some banks reported downtime on their ATMs.