By Fredrick Obura
With more than 20,000 Sim-cards lost daily, mobile phone companies are making a kill with charges of Sh50 per card
Small and Medium Software Companies have found new business opportunities in the phone contacts back-up, following rampant loss and irreparable damages of mobile phones.
Figures from leading telecom firms show more than 20,000 sim-cards are lost daily, which translates to about 18 million in a month.
yumobile says it handles 500 cases of sim-card replacements daily. The company charges Sh50 for simcard replacement.
Like yumobile, other operators charge similar amount for replacement, a move that see the operators pocket over Sh90 million annually in sim-card replacement.
“It is not the money spent on replacement that matters to a number, but phones have become like a bank as many use it for storage,” noted Hussein Ramji of Wipe Out Ltd, a data recovery company.
“The phone holds a lot of confidential information, this could be misused by criminals in case a phone falls into a wrong hand,” he said. “This scores the reason why many companies are coming out with software to help recover or back up information in the phone,” he said in an interview.
Apart from replacement related expenses, subscribers contend with bigger loss of contacts and other crucial information stored in the phone, which hold together lives.
So far, Bitz IT Ltd, M-Wingu, Wipe out Mobile, and Safaricom have launched data backup services to restore normalcy in case of phone theft or any damage affecting contacts. Wipe Out Mobile, the latest company in the business has invested Sh2 million in a software that allow users to swipe important personal or business information and contacts in the event their phones are destroyed, lost or stolen. In the event a phone is lost, the wipe out feature will allow users to prevent confidential information from getting into the wrong hands by remotely deleting data from the phone. “It will cost mobile users Sh100 per year to backup and restore data, Sh500 to wipeout confidential information and Sh650 to backup, restore and wipe out data.”
The launch of the service last week intensifies the battle for contact back up services in the mobile telephony market.
Recently, Bitz IT Consulting Ltd, a local technology firm also announced an investment worth Sh5.2 million in a service that would see subscribers easily retrieve phone numbers in case a handset is stolen or data in the phonebook is erased mysteriously.
According to James Ng’ang’a, Bitz IT consulting director, the firm’s application dubbed Maisha Poa allows one to remotely run another phone book similar to the one on the phone in its servers.
“The system retrieves contacts on request by the owner, it is a step to ensuring business continuity in case a phone is stolen or data erased mysteriously.” Ng’ang’a says one has to send his or her name and identity card number to 2050 to download the application from the server to a phone.
“A password will be generated immediately and this is what one will use to back up, synchronise the contacts and for retrieval whenever needed,” he said in an interview.
Charles Musungu, Chief Executive Officer, Mwingu Technologies casts a good future for the backup business due to cloud computing technology taking root in the local market.
“The new backup system is made possible through the cloud computing technology, a new trend that allows information to be stored in other location away from the physical mobile phone,” he said. “This will promote outsourcing of services such as the backup to the experts.”
