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Kenya debuts cellphone backup

By Galgallo Fayo
Johannesburg, 11 Jan 2012

A back-up system to store data from a user's cellphone has been unveiled in Kenya, and is said to be the first such service in Africa.

The system, known as M-Wingu, was developed by a team of six Kenyans, at a cost of Sh5 million, and has already attracted 3 000 subscribers since its inception in December.

“It took us four months to develop and we are glad of the reception it is receiving,” says M-Wingu CEO Charles Musungu.

Subscribers can log-in to the M-Wingu technology Web site to download the application, or alternatively send the word 'backup' to the short-code 5114. Currently, the service, which uses cloud technology, is limited to back-ups of contacts, diaries and “to do” lists, but it will shortly add back-up for SMS.

“We are working together with Amazon and Google, which are the largest cloud service providers and are providing us with the infrastructure upon which M-Wingu is based,” says Musungu.

The Kenyan mobile market has grown exponentially in recent years, to more than 25 million subscribers by June last year, from a population of just under 40 million. It has been driven further by local software development, such as M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer system developed by Kenyan telco, Safaricom, and now exported worldwide.

However, handset and SIM card losses frequently leave users with serious problems. One of the leading Kenyan telcos is replacing an average of 10 000 SIM cards a month, according to Musungu, making data back-up a real need.

M-Wingu is moving to target the whole of the East African region and other African countries with the new service. “We expect to roll out the project in the remaining East African countries by the end of January,” says Musungu.

“In SA, Nigeria and Ghana, talks are under way on the legal requirements. We expect to roll it out by February [in those countries]. Our target is to reach about 565 million mobile subscribers in Africa.”

Kenyan software developers have embraced cloud technology with particular enthusiasm over the past year, with at least three local firms now providing cloud-based services in addition to the already established multinationals.

This latest M-Wingu application enables users to create a profile in the cloud and store their phone data. In case of loss, they can simply retrieve the data by logging in to their profiles: the transfer is seamless to handsets.

“M-Wingu gives you all the numbers together with the names as you saved them, with no limit to the number of contacts you can back up and retrieve,” says Musungu.

The service is equally suitable for low-feature phones and smartphones. “We realised that the majority of mobile phone users do not have high-end phones, and if we locked them out, we would be operating at a great disadvantage to ourselves,” says Musungu.

The system was developed at a cost of Sh5 million, but the company estimates the cost to expand to other countries will be slightly above the cost of the Kenyan launch.

“Most of the costs have gone to setting up the infrastructure and also into acquiring permits and licences to set up operations in other African countries, but we are confident that this investment will pay off.”

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Kenyan counterfeit phone users get reprieve

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