Customer Management

Ongoing efforts to make smartphones affordable to more Africans while still ensuring a margin for sellers are continuing. In fact, this week has seen an alliance between Africa’s best-known home-grown electronic marketplace and a financing group to encourage more Kenyans to buy smartphones.

Indonesian telco Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison announced on Thursday it has launched a new AI-powered semantic search feature powered by Google Cloud in its customer service apps, which it says will enable smarter and more intuitive digital experiences for customers.

UAE telecoms operator du says it has partnered with Microsoft, Nokia, Khalifa University’s 6G Research Center, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to launch what it says is the first AI model that serves critical telecom functions related to customer service in Arabic. 

Kalaam Telecom Group, a regional provider of digital infrastructure and ICT solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with Silah Gulf, a customer experience and business process outsourcing provider, to jointly advance digital innovation and elevate service delivery standards across the region.

Operator MTN’s mobile money business in South Africa, known as MoMo, has announced plans to make 4G and 5G smartphones available on credit to prepaid customers – without the need for background credit checks.

Operator Ooredoo Kuwait has partnered with tech giant Ericsson to modernise its charging system, paving the way, the partners say, for new business opportunities and competitive marketing strategies.

Pan-African financial services group Ecobank and cloud computing services company Google Cloud have announced what they call a groundbreaking collaboration aimed at transforming financial services with advanced analytics and AI and driving digital empowerment across Africa.

Claro Ecuador, a leading mobile operator in Ecuador, has appointed VOX Solutions as the exclusive gateway for international application-to-person (A2P) SMS and voice traffic delivery into is network.

Philippine telco Smart Communications announced on Tuesday it is partnering with Salesforce to create an unified, AI-powered digital storefront for its e-commerce site to improve the customer experience.

Cambodian service provider Smart Axiata, and digital payments business TrueMoney Cambodia say they have signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MoU) to expand access to essential telecom and fintech services across the country.

MTN's mobile money (MoMo) service in South Sudan has teamed up with Onafriq, a pan-African payments provider, to offer inbound international remittance services.

Underlining the continuing diversification of space-based telecoms, satellite communications company Viasat has made two very different announcements in recent days – one involving satellite communications for buses and the other for private jets.

Kenyan operator Safaricom has recently launched a campaign called Maisha Poa Ni Digital (Life Is Cool Digital), aiming to accelerate digital inclusion across Kenya, specifically by encouraging Kenyans to switch from 2G phones to affordable 4G smartphones.

Amdocs, a provider of software and services to communications and media companies, has announced the successful go-live of the Amdocs Customer Engagement Platform for Philippines service provider PLDT.

Egyptian fintech company Fawry has partnered with global communications platform Truecaller, which calls itself the world’s best caller ID and spam blocking app, to provide its customers with a more secure, transparent, and seamless calling experience.

Pan-African operator Orange says it has launched the first-ever 'My Customer, My Boss' initiative simultaneously in its 17 subsidiaries in Middle East and Africa.

Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of Chinese technology giant Tencent, has made its debut at MWC25 with the introduction of the Tencent Cloud Super App as a Service (TCSAS) solution.

Consulting and professional services giant Deloitte is launching at MWC a collaboration with Ookla, a global leader in connectivity intelligence, aimed at enhancing network performance, services, solutions and insights across the globe.

Operator MTN South Africa, and LotusFlare, a provider of a cloud-native digital commerce and monetisation platform for communications service providers, are to partner to support strategic initiatives in the South African market.

Alleged pressure on Nigerian operators to raise mobile tariffs because of economic factors is continuing to inspire a lively debate between various factions over what sort of rise might be acceptable.

Nokia has announced that servicer provider e& UAE is the first in the world to use its slicing solution to create a dedicated end-to-end network slice capable of meeting the speed and latency demands of today’s gaming applications.

Indian global information technology and system integration company Echelon Edge has partnered with a number of IT businesses to support the ongoing 4G network rollout by state-owned operator BSNL, a project reportedly covering over 100,000 sites nationwide.

Malaysian telco U Mobile said on Monday it will deploy contact centre solutions from Amazon Web Services (AWS) based on generative AI in its contact centre after running a successful proof-of-concept (PoC) for the past six months.

China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak), which operates under the brand Zong 4G, says it has developed its own in-house large language model (LLM) designed specifically for customer service support for its telecoms services.

A flurry of deals and agreements underlines the continuing competition for a piece of the still-growing digital payment market in Africa. Some of the big names in the frame in two of the most recent announcements are Standard Bank, Volante Technologies, Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) and Mastercard.

Data-driven strategies for customer growth and retention are in the news again – this time thanks to a division of Zain Group, a technology and digital communications provider operating in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa.

A contactless boarding pass system is set to reduce waiting times and create a better travel experience for passengers at India’s airports, according to air transport technology giant SITA.

Indonesian telco Telkomsel says that it has signed a MoU with Tencent Cloud and local digital infrastructure company M Cash Integrasi to explore the adoption of palm scanning technology as a biometric tool to improve customer service.

An AI-focused partnership between satellite operator Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT) and technology company Vault Hill described as ‘ground-breaking’ may, for once, justify the term.

Google recently published a blog about its sixth annual Google for Brazil event, where it shared news of investments and innovations in the country. Not surprisingly, the innovation that seems to have attracted the strongest press attention has been an anti-theft artificial intelligence (AI) feature for phones.

Cairo-based AI developer WideBot announced on Tuesday that state-owned Libyan telco Almadar Aljadid will adopt its Arabic conversational AI chatbot platform to improve customer service.

Last year, Nokia released its Corteca software suite, with the promise of delivering smart broadband for a better experience.

Alfanet, a prominent internet service provider (ISP) in Ecuador that serves residential and commercial customers across the country, has chosen AXESS 5 ACS (Auto Configuration Server) software from device management solutions company Axiros.