Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Recent rumors suggest that the Big Green Brother is having its legal department catalog all the Kenyan Blogs that speak about the not-so-good things they do, repeatedly. I have been told that their legal department can ‘Geuza Kiswahili’ and incriminate some of us for defamation and character assassination. So as I quietly wonder how you can assassinate something that does not exist, I find it prudent to just stop any IT related ventures and start writing about football.

The last thing I want is some guys in green suits coming to my lab and installing windows on all my machines, formatting all my diskettes and scratching all my DVDs. Ohh, how sad will that be. Not to mention changing my homepage to facebook.com!! I cant live with that.

Step in Armachelibar!!

Sounds like a Chinese male porn star, but Armachelibar is an abbreviation for [Arsenal Manchester Chelsea Liverpool and Barcelona]. I know. I will copyright and trademark this name.

So, to kickstart things, todays article is about WHAT the football team you support says about you.

Gayggs like it rough!

1 – manchester united

What the team does - I could not be arsed to write anything in that name in caps. manchester united is the second most successful team in england, after Liverpool. Full list here. They are commonly known as team ya ofisi for getting at least 15 points each season from referee favors, bad officiating and dubious blantant-dive penalties. man united has   debt of 716 Million Pounds. This is the money they borrow every season to buy players and buy success and buy trophies. In addition to the massive debt, they pay the Glazer family 20 Million Pounds per year for ‘administration fees’. The mathematics show that if man united fail to win the EPL or the UCL for 2 straight years, they go down like Leeds United.

Man United does not sign Muslim players or African players. They stopped with Quintone Fortune and DjembaDjemba. manucho came in, loan and sold. Diouf, tick… tock… This is not exactly racism, but it borders there.

What it says about you – man united personifies someone living in a bubble. someone used to having things their way and always living on favors. they are usually the gloating and arrogant type who think they are better and bigger than anyone else. Most man united fans are even clueless at the clubs financial situation or even the history. They are what we call the ‘classic wikipedia soccer glory hunters‘. Too much noise and little brain.

2 – Liverpool

What the team does - The kop is a team of the past. Past glory so great that even after not winning the title for 20+ years, man united and The Mighty Arsenal FC are yet to overtake them. Such is Liverpool’s heritage.

What it says about you – Liverpool is a team for people which can never let go. Who live in the past. Most Liverpool fans will be heard talking about how they used to date Arunga and how they once lived in the US, or used to be in the same Hostel with Sebi.

3 – Chelsea

What the team does - Error! Not enough memory to remember anything worth mentioning about chelski. Click Next.

What it says about you – Una shida mzee.

4 – The Mighty Arsenal FC

What the team does - everything but make the weak fans happy. Arsenal is a self-funded and least owing team in terms of financials. it has the healthiest balance sheet in the EPL and has the most expensive tickets for the games. Fans pay because they know they will go home happy. Win, Draw or Lose, Arsenal always do it in style.

Arsenal gets the most Injuries and worst referee decisions and analysts hate it. It is the one and ONLY team in england

What it says about you – Arsenal personifies the classic Kenyan Hustler. Live within our means and if we dont successd today, kesho ni siku. Arsenal always fields its third eleven every season because the opposition always makes sure the First team midfield, strikers and defenders are decapitated to make sure Arsenal wins nothing. But we are always in top 4. Most Arsenal fans in Kenyan, Uganda and all the places I have visited are Educated, Self-Employed and patient people. Such is the persona.

5 – Barca!!

This is an Arsenal with Money. Same football style, same principles.

Err… back to code.

Well, as usual, I don’t sugar-coat my thought so as to appear compliant and non-rebellious. Kama hupendi ukweli, enda Facebook na u-poke Arunga.

So, with all my un-dying love and admiration for Safaricom and the everlasting hope that one day they will hire me as a sweeper, I was perplexed the other day to find out that they had partnered with Western Union, KenTV and Provident Cap to enable someone from UK send money to you, via Mpesa. Ofcourse, as always, at the cost of an arm and a leg.

Story here

Mpesa Success Factors

Kenyans are cheap. And have cheap phones. So how do you make money from this cheap lot? Create a USSD service, like Mpesa. I somehow believe that this is why Safaricom has only Opened USSD access to MobilePlanet, its sister company. So that the REAL Kenyan hard-code coders don’t get to innovate. Imagine if USSD was OPEN? So, Unless you are hired my MP, Sorry, No USSD for you. But we all know. Real coders don’t get hired.

So, Mpesa was born. Actually not developed in Kenya. No public USSD access. Which did not surprise many. No one at MP is good enough to do a simple system like Mpesa.

Mpesa got it right. It works on USSD meaning everyone can use it. Perfect for Kenya. Perfect for Afghanistan.

I am sure if PesaPal or JamboPay or even Kasomo had done Mpesa, it would be fully automated and I would not have to wait for 48 hours for my KPLC bill to clear. I would have direct Mpesa- to-PayPal integration, Direct-and-2-way mpesa-to-bank integration and a fully automated Mpesa standing orders system to automatically send 50 bob airtime to all my friends every 6 hours.

This type of coding might seem complicated to beginners on coding, or even advanced VB coders, but it is stuff we do everyday for fun. Reverse engineering Mpesa, hacking the HTTP public stack they have and USSD menu automation to automate such stuff. We are about to release a public Mpesa API. Open-source, ofcourse.

I am also sure that If Kelly or Koros had configured those servers, you would NEVER have the 24-hour Mpesa down-times that cripple all your weekend plots. These guys KNOW their shiite. EuberAdmins. The capacity problems Safaricom always experiences is due to sending boys to do a man’s job. Talk of sending kindergarten kids to do KCSE.

What’s so funny?

This is how it works:

• Go to any of the 19 agent locations in the UK. Yes 19. In the whole of UK.
• Deposit money.
• Your person gets it on their mpesa.

“Well, this is the same way it works in Kenya”, You say, “Shida Iko wapi?”

The following are the problems that are NOT addressed by this model that I believe are already addressed by the PesaPals, LipaNets and JamboPays of this world.

• Safaricom is using a model that has succeeded in the 3rd world in a first world country, ignoring all the reasons-for-success in Kenya.
• Majority of the people in the 1st world countries have Credit-Cards. They can do all this online. why the African Agents model in the UK? Safaricom would do well in passing the automation baton to LipaNet so that all UK users can do this ONLINE. No agents! Simply Register a simple domain line www.mpesafromuktokenyawithoutusingwesternunionorkentvoranyoneelseforthatmatter.com and have people enter credit card details and you move that money directly to Mpesa. This is Free advice because even my 5 year old daughter can do that.

It really beats me.

Safaricom have ALL the money, well, most of it. Why don’t they consult with local talent while doing some if this solutions.. We come cheap and we are ok with sleeping at KenyaComfort. Hatupendi Hilton. Spending millions to invite foreign ‘consultants’ who know NOTHING about the African market and mobile dynamics.

End of rant;

Ohh.. Pole.. back to code.

Well, on march 11, I had the privilege and the pleasure of meeting the creme-de-la-creme of Kenya’s Mobile Industry. The MoMo Kenyan chapter if official BABY! SHe is alive and kicking in Kenya.

The list is endless, but top of my mind was Paul Kukubo, Mark Kaigwa, Pratik, Forrest, Aly Khan Satchu, Kaburo, Lewela, Ronald Meru, Timo, Leon Asoyo Oywero, Kemibaro, Erik Hersman, Caroline Juma, Norman Gombe, Oscar from Zain… Just to mention whose who smiled at me, shook my hand and spent some seconds to talk to me with either advice or questions.

Slowly, Idd Salim is becoming a celeb. Hehehehehehaters. Relaxini bana. Cant a brother get some recognition?

Hersmann stated that the world is waiting for the Kenya’s version of FacebookMobile, but with focus on Local content and trends. I told him about our Zunguka Mobile site and he was pleasantly surprised. I smiled thinking, “A black Facebook on steroids. If only Symbiotic had 1/6473868 of the development investment/budget of Facebook. But no one believes in Kenya. We have to fend for ourselves!! Innovative Geniuses doing hand-to-mouth programming with emphasis on code-for-food-and-rent.”

Mark as always was happy and enthusiastic about our products like Sembuse and TumaSMS and hoped that GotIssuez could do a collabo with Symbiotic. I asked only one Question? ‘Why not?’. There is alot of content repetition in Kenya. What we need is content aggregation. Nipe nikupe. As in, Symbiotic.

Moses Kemibaro, the man whose mind is not narrow and got words like the mighty sparrow was next. “Salim, congrats bana. Your website was ‘Kenyas Blog of the week’ in the Business Daily”. I had no idea! Thanks BDA. BDA march 11, page 17. Moses then Introduced me to the great Aly. Well, the Kenyan Version.

I was most likely speaking from a whole meter below the Tall Aly. I think he was standing on his Wallet. Nevertheless,  I am sure he got me verbatim when I Explained how he could use the Sembuse platform to monetize his NSE Stocks Data on rich.co.ke and rake millions. Make the data go to the people, not make people come to your website for data. He was all smiles. Watch this space.

Ronald of Adtel and Norman of IMS told me sweet things I like hearing about some things we call USSD, MONEY and CHAPAA.

And then came a God-sent moment. No, not me finally speaking to a Female. I was doing dudes all night jana. I met this guy whose jobbo is to get poor and orphaned kids from slums and teach them photo-shop, web design etc, and then empower them to be self-reliant with web jobs. I told him about Symbiotic being a Company formed by Old Boys from Starehe, understand sponsorship and charity to the letter.

We are pamojaz with him and we got no Issuez with helping. I also suggested he talks to MobilePlanet. What I hear is that Safaricom has given ONLY mobile planet access to USSD and locked out all the other developers and PRSPS and these kids could really benefit from knowledge of USSD coding. maybe at last in Kenya, we can see more innovative solutions on USSD rather than wait for a Semeni every 3 years. [Btw, i have no beef with Semeni and I believe it is a great solution. It is actually named after Semenya, a real champion of the people. But come on, this is Kenya. We have the best coders and thinkers on earth. Am sure we can do better if these APIs are opened.]. Or maybe my Informer meant Safaricon, and I heard Safaricom. I stand corrected.

Speaking of our Beloved Saf, I did not meet anyone from Safaricom at MoMo. Either they were not there, ama maybe tu ni network haikuwa.

Oscar, Bi Juma and the rest of the esteemed Salim-meeters were all positive and I am sure all this will come to a good end. Or is it a start?

Only time will tell.

Err, Code time it is.

March 18, 2010.

It is the Tandaa Local Content Conference today in Nairobi. Thanks to ICT Board again.

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Wanyama [@kenyafreelancer], say “What more do we Kenyans want? We have Fibre now”

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Cynthia Muyoti of FabGuru , say “Facebook has made my business better? 1391 fans todate and I am soon expanding my Shoes Business”

Seated next to me is Agosta Liko, Mbugua Njihia and John Karanja. I hear talk after talk. Aly Khan Satchu talks about how anyone can be rich and gives examples.

So I brainstorm with fellow coders and the question becomes; ‘How can Kenyan Coders be rich?’. Not the “i can afford to go out and i own a toyota” rich. Or the “I pay all my bills and my rent is always paid on time” rich. How about the “I look at the food names on the menu, not the price before I order rich”, or the “I am undecided whether to drive my Range or my Mustang today rich”.

50 Cent said ‘get rich or die trying’ [GRODT], but I tell you, try ‘get rich or get rich’ [GRoGR]. We are in a position never experienced before. So, for free as usual, I will list the top 10 opportunities that are there open-legged and wet and just waiting for Kenyan coders to smell the coffee and dive in and start making the old-Money conglomerate wish they could impregnate their daughters.Only coders?? Naaah! ANYONE can jump into the eChapaa bandwagon. It is free and there for everyone.

My Top 10

1. Local Digital Content – Yes. Content is the buzzword. Enough Said. Anything you know [Yes, am speaking to Pamela, Wangechi and Anyanche] is sellable. Just grab word-press and google-checkout and walla!
2. Content Discovery Tools – Coders. The challenge is yours. Java Applications, Desktop Applications. There is over KSHS 100M not made per month by PRSPs because of lack of content discovery tools. That is why the guys down South are inviting  likes of Symbiotic to go down there and consult on HOW to convert content and knowledge into wallet-content.
3. Mobile Apps – Think of anything useful as a mobile phone app and there are 100, 000 people who NEED it and will PAY 20 bob each for it.
4. Mobile Games – Here we go again. the limit is only your imagination. grab a keyboard and write some code!! Stop these silly excuses that ‘programming is hard’. I got a miserable B in KCSE and can code, sembuse wewe!! But whatever you do, please don’t use VB.
5. Hacking and Security – The silence is deafening, but the hackers are on their way. Be equipped to defend Kenya. Your hacking knowledge will be invaluable in 3-6 months time. Tick.. tock…
6. Animation and Design – Some foreign jamaaz came here, partnered with HomeBoyz Studions and now are making millions of dollars per month. What are Kenyans doing? Facebook all day and complaining about how hard life is, how much of a a parent-hater Esther Arunga is and how much money Ruto is stealing. Kaeni papo hapo.
7. Kenyan Social Networks – YES. I said it. You can start your own Facebook tomorrow and become rich like crazy. There are 4M Kenyans with an Internet Connections. This number grows by the day. there are only 580, 000 kenyans on facebook. This is 14.5% percent of Kenyans with Internet. So what are the other 85.5% doing? Waiting for you to give them something better. Something Kenyan. Something more contextual. Lala tu.
8. Adult Sites – Ati Eish? We all know Kenyan is the mdinyano capital of East Africa. An average slut makes KSHS 2, 500 per night. And those are the cheap ones. Connect the clients and the vendors. Simple as! I wont say anything more.
9. eParty – Bring clubbing to the mobile phone. Hook people up to YOU on thursdays, fridays and sato. Just charge each user 10 bob per week. Kenyans will pay.
10. Your own WebTV Show – If you are that Kibera guy who can dance like MJ or that Kileleshwa bathroom singer, get heard online! Make some money. Sell yourself!

So maswali ni, what do KENYANS want! Are you going to waste all day thinking up cocky status updates for facebook and poking strangers who you mean NOTHING to, or are you going to monetize your time? Are you going to waste your life away in the digital world, or are you going to focus on what will really make your momma smile in public pointing at you and say, “yeah! that’s my baby!”. Are you going to complain all day about the government, corruption, the kaanjo and these bloody foreigners, or are you going to take control of your life?

Amua mwenyewe!

Ehh, back to code! Pole timo.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of being in the same room with some very influential development oriented people. Meeting was held at ICT board, hosted by PK. Invited were Symbiotic, MobileMonday, Safaricom, Top PRSPS and Developers in then Kenyan Mobile Arena

It was a good meeting of minds and well worth the time and effort. For Once, I was in a room with some guys from Safaricom who had their brains bigger than their Egos.

Present

Paul Kukubo – Head of ICT, Lewela and Kaburo

2 Peters from Safaricom, Sylvia Mulinge,

Salim, Timo from SMC, Wesley from Letti Games, Cellulant, Adtel and IMS teams.

Absent

All other Jokers in the country.

Agenda

• Why Safaricom is seen as a monster by Kenyan Software developers. Perception being that most ideas sent to Safaricom disappear at the Marketing department and and get ’stolen’ to make Safcom all this BILLIONS, while the real inventors languish in poverty.
• How do we as inventors and developers work together with Safaricom and make a living out of code.
• What are the key failure factors met by developers while dealing with Safaricom.

Mangumi na Mateke

The top 2 issues and responses are as listed below.

ISSUE: The current locus standi is grim and really pathetic. Wesley argued that Apple Automatically gives the developer 70% shares and keeps only 30%. This encourages the developers to innovate and pays them immediately. Safaricom and the PRSPs take over 75% leaving the developer with a measly and satanic 25%. As if that is not enough torture and an abuse of human rights, the developer WILL NOT get paid until after 4 months. A Kenyan Mobile developer CANNOT live on code, unless they decide to follow the path of the weak and prostitute themselves and get employed

RESPONSE: Safaricom expressed willingness to shift the revenue shares to the favor of the developer. Developers will get as high as 90% of the money they bring. Systems that bring DATA traffic and thus bring residual income to Safaricom, e.g. Sembuse from Symbiotic, will also attract special treatment and revenue share models from Safaricom.

ISSUE: There are SO MANY requirements from Safaricom before a developer can get to the platform where their services reach the market. CCK Licence, PRSP Licence etc.

RESPONSE: This challenge fell to the PRSPs. It is, obviously out of the Safaricom domain. Adtel and IMS expressed willingness to incubate developers and their systems [Apps, Games, Ideas] at a very sexy revenue share.

There is a positive vibe from Safaricom at last which might indicate the following:

• The actual problem and cause of the ‘Safaricom ni Madogi’ movement in Kenya by coders is due to the red-tape between the entry-level marketing department and the upper tier. I remember going with a proposal to SafCom and Evah from VAS asking if we were read to accept 5% revenue share while SafCom kept 95%. I felt like crying. Maybe she was Joking. Meeting people higher up makes you realize that SafCom aint all that bad.
• Safaricom have started to realize that Voice and SMS are dead! The next frontier for MSP Mkwanjalization is DATA and DATA driving solutions. Step in Java Developers!
• Safaricom have started to smell the coffee. Which is good. Of late, they have just been inhaling the AC!

Lemmi go back to code. Mbugua is giving me that ‘you have not coded for 12 minutes straight’ eye! And No, Deno, Safaricom have not ‘onad me kando’ to do a positive blog about them. Good stuff is happening.

Kenyan coders are all smiles. The real die-hards like Kasomo and Salim cant stand up OK because the erection that the new Mpesa move generates has taken all the blood from the legs. We have been waiting for this. Now it is Here! With one blow of the keyboard, The Mighty Safaricom (not to be confused with the satanic Safaricon), have finally made our wishes come true.

We, at Symbiotic, can now finalize our ZungukaPay payment gateway and overtake all the wannabes in the market.

“What has Safaricom done, Salim?!!”, You ask

Well, something they should have done even before Semenya started growing hard Female nipples. Safaricom, of late, have decided to attach the Number of the Money Sender and Money receiver in the M-Pesa mReceipt. How simple is that, to the un-educated eye!! How cool is that to payment gateways developers!!

Maybe, even the guys at Safaricom did it accidentally, but let me not spoil this post.

Now I will have to re-do the payment modules I had done for TumaSMS, Sembuse, Sovaya and Zunguka… But I aint complaining.

Now I have a clear and valid reason to apply for a Safaricom Mpesa Business Account.

I will blog once the payment gateway is done.

Kudos Safaricom!

Tick… tock… Tick… tock… Goes my HackOmeter. “Have they been hit yet?”, I ask myself. I switch on the TV to see if a Kenyan Bank has yet been hit. “Not yet”, I conclude. “I see voluptuous women flaunting naked in the streets an on bill boards. Soon the rapists are coming.”, I tell my friends. And Ohh, what a sad day it will be.

The Topic for today is SMS Banking.

What it is MEANT to do:

SMS banking is a remote banking service via mobile phones. Upon each money withdrawal operation with a card account (purchase using a card, cash withdrawal in an ATM), the client connected to the SMS Bank system receives an SMS message with information on the transaction. Such SMS message usually includes the charged amount, part of the credit card number, date, time, and place of the transaction (shop or ATM location). Full stop! That is what SMS Banking was meant to be, should Be and Must remain as.

What is has been ABUSED to be:

But hang on, there. What about these services all over the news that allow a user to check balances, transfer money, stop checks etc, all from SMS (or USSD as the case of Equity and Barclays) ? Isn’t that what SMS banking really is?

Well, this is classic example Security Through Obscurity.  Like walking at Tom Mboya at 2am waving a KSHS 1000 Note and reaching home safe. You won’t do that for long.

Shamelessly stolen from The RSA Website, :

We have all read about the iPhone and Blackberry SMS attacks and vulnerabilities. There is current commercially available (let alone black market) software that allows eaves dropping and spoofing of SMS. The lack of SMS confidentiality has been established by congressional members, city mayors, and international government officials in dozens of cases where their text messages were intercepted and made public. Like landline communication, cell phone communications including SMS should be considered to have no confidentiality.

An SMS can be:

• Intercepted on its way from your phone to Zain/Safaricon/Safaricom.
• Changed and edited [The content, the destination Numbers, The Source Number etc].
• Delayed.
• Deflected and even deleted before it ever gets there.

This can be done with equipment that cost less than USD 10, 000 and also with techniques that anyone who knows the difference between Hellon and Arunga can master in a week.

How Can this be done?

There are 3 Knows ways to Intercept communication between 2 sources that are sent via SMS:

• Phone cloning – The best. Totally bamboozles the MSP Cell Towers [Saf/Zain]. They see two phones with same phone number, MIN and ESN. Very effective on CDMA networks but not as effective on GSM – More Info -
• SIM Copying – VERY Illegal because it is 100% efficient. Clones the SIM and yours becomes active whereas the clone is dormant but receives copies of all your SMS and calls.
• Patched Firmware  – A very easy and common method is for a hacker to upload a super-firmware to their phone. This upgrade turns their phone into a super-phone radio transmitter and they can receive SMSes that are addressed to THEM and people AROUND them. You can really have fun with this at a club, a mall or a bus-stop.

Ever been robbed or attacked then the assailants returned your phone / SIM? Chances are you got cloned and All your phone-calls [as long as you are on the same Cell Area] and ALL your SMSES [irrespective], get delivered to YOU real phone and its clone.

Where is the problem?

Ok. Enough phone hacking lessons. For those dumb enough not to grasp where the problem is, so far, please, allow me to reiterate:

• Your SMSes are neither CONFIDENTIAL nor PERSONAL. Get over it! In a recent article about how guys from SafCon sell data call and SMS records shows the first level of breach. Your data can be bought!
• Your SMSes can be intercepted by hackers. SafCon can fire all those name-spoilers they hire, but your information is only secure from humans. It is NOT digitally secure. SMS and USSD traffic is rarely encrypted, if ever.

What is MY problem?

Just your money, my reader. You dont want all your hard-eraned cash to end up in Nigeria, do you?

Why doesnt Safcon [Not to be confused with Safaricom] etc do something?

Honestly, not their problem. You send SMSes, they make money. And it is not their mandate to SECURE these systems. they offer the ROAD. If you get an accident on it, hard luck!

Is All Lost in the Mobile Banking Sector?

Not by a long shot. But that is a topic for another day, or you can skype/gmail/yahoo me @iddsalim so tell you HOW Symbiotic is Countering this menace. Power through serious code..

Adios!

Back to code!

Well, someone once told me : “There is no group of people easier to lie to, than Kenyans”. I agreed. Especially the Kenyan non-gay male.

So, for the last 8 years or so, I have been reading reports from steadman on how many people like raila on mondays and how many like kibaki on fridays after 2 bottles etc. I took them as gospel truth. There was no way of verifying these stats.

For things that I have no knowledge of, I always Assume that THAT the truth is what I am told but people, I assume, know better.

But when someone grows the balls to LIE TO MY FACE about things I Know about, it really annoys me to the gut. Even more annoying than sitting with a Man Urinals FC fan. Are we that dumb?

Synovate are paid Millions of Kenya Shillings to research and report. But this time, they lied to my favorite news reporter, KK, at [HERE] and this really annoyed me. Thus Spaketh Synovate:

• Kenya now has over 2 million registered users on Facebook.
• Email is being discarded in favour of social networks like Facebook and Twitter by new Internet users in Kenya. One quarter of Kenyans who are online do not have email addresses.
• 79% of Kenya’s Internet users are members of Facebook.
• Daily and weekly internet usage in Kenya have both doubled in the last two years whereas monthly usage grew by over 80% in the same period.
• Kenyan Internet users spend approximately 70 minutes online during each visit. This utilization is comparable to the average amount of time spent on television.

Ohhh.. Phullllleeeez!!! How about some facts. How about some REAL facts.

• Kenya now has 561, 000 registered users on FB. Not 2M.
  
• Email is being discarded in favour of social networks like Facebook and Twitter by new Internet users in Kenya. One quarter of Kenyans who are online do not have email addresses. [Ohh dear!! You need an email address to register on twitter and facebook. Chicken and Egg, anyone?!]
  
• Only 16.7% of Kenya’s Internet users are members of Facebook. Not 79%!! Where did they get that from. There are just over 4M Kenyans with Internet – [Check Here]

I could not bother with the rest.

It is one thing to tell Kenyans that KTN is the best TV today and that KBC is the best after they pay some few coins, but please, leave the Internet Data and Statistics to the open. This is FREE and IMMANIPULATABLE information that we CAN verify.

This time, SINNOVATE, you have been measures, weighed and found wanting.

Amen.

Back to code!

As soon as my late grandma [mhsrip] told me ‘never bite more than you can chew’, she added, ‘mgema akisifiwa, pombe hulitia maji’.

I always blog about Safaricom because it is my hope that this big Kenyan company could up their game and style up to make sure their services and internal processes are upto scratch. But ohhhh, how disappointed I always am!

One of the biggest problems facing Safaricom is the glaring lack of capacity planning. At end of months and weekends when most mpesa transactions take place, there are always delays and outages. Obviously based on hardware constraints and total lack of responsible sysadminery.

The fact that Safaricom are just users of Mpesa and know absolutely zilch about the internal modus operandi, code  and garbage collection in Mpesa core system, could be used to excuse them form the blame. They dont own the Mpesa System like Zain owns Zap. But you would expect better from a company termed as the most profitable in Kenya.

It has become a common knowledge and a widely accepted fact that Safaricom are in business because Kenyans are always forgiving and ready to settle for mediocrity. Network congestion, Mpesa Outages etc are the order of the day.

The common phrase in town, ‘mpesa iko down’ [no pun intended] after mpesa servers go for lunch is generally acceptable. But watch out, Zap and yuCash are catching up.

Of late, Safcom have introduced a all you can eat Internet bundle for 7 days at Kshs 999. To the uneducated and freebies loving majority of Kenyans, this is an offer from heaven. But this could not be further from the truth.

Imagine the JAM that would be on our roads if for one week the government offered FREE fuel for everyone. That is what is happening to Safaricom Internet.

The once famed 2MBPS pipe I could get now crawls at a pathetic 6Kbps.

Poor capacity planning. Once again.

The 999 per week journeymen are now jamming the lines and slurping all the capacity for the ardent daily users. You would expect Safaricom to demilitarize the Unlimited Net from the mainstream net, but hey, they are Safaricom. They can do whatever they want.

The unlimited internet bundle is now SO LIMITED, it should be converted to a company. Maybe they can do another IPO on it.

Maybe sasa I will even be banned from wearing green shirts. Adios!

Last week, I got information and notification that I (Cdr Idd Salim – not related entities) was banned and blacklisted by Safaricom Kenya Limited and should not be seen physically or in a proposal as a service provider, cook, guard or even a potential husband to ANY Safaricom employees.

This was hugely because of my uncensored and non boot-licking blogs about the way a fictitious Kenyan company called Safaricon [dont know why Safaricom thinks they actually are Safaricon.] lures Kenyan developers into meetings and steals their ideas, implements them and commerializes them without even a rebate or a simple Sambaza to the inventor.

I spoke to Mwaniki and he told me : ‘Achana na Saf. They are just a jogoo la shamba with a measly 15M simcards sold and jut over 6M active subscribers. On the global scene, they are a micro-player. Think Global, my small brother. They cant match Zain’s 70M+ Subscribers.’. I smiled. But since I don’t like making enemies of any size, shape or color, I am here to apologize for the confusion.

Actually, I think Safaricom is the best company in Kenya and I have no beef with them. My fiction stories on Safcon will, however, continue.

The only beef I have with the mighty Safaricom that we all love and awe at, however, is this sad story:

In Dec last year, I remember, there was a certain Sally LM who was helping me solve a case where  my Safcom numbers was being tracked and all the SMSes I sent given to my S.O. and all my Voice calls sent to her as email attachments. Every day, after a tiring day hassling to pay rent and at least afford grocery, I would reach home for a FBI interrogation on who I was talking to and why I called a certain lady, ‘Darling’ in one of my SMSes. Sally LM was very cooperative until the 18th Dec. She stopped when we had finally cornered the Safaricom employee who was selling my call records to my S.O.

Safaricom, at first, categorically denied that they actually store ALL audio and text for all its subscribers. The reason, from Sally, was ‘technical’. Once I told her I knew what a mouse was and could at least double-click without stuttering, she explained that the volume of calls ‘was too big and the data storage capacity at Safaricom would not be enough’.

So I called my good old big brother at UTL and he told me that BY LAW, all Mobile Companies store data and this data is easily accessible. According to Vodafone, call data is stored for 6 months and all internet data for 3 years. The main reason is for crime revention. In normal modus operandi, Safaricom would  would want a Subpoena if records are requested for an account or telephone that you do not own [maybe requested by CID or police]. It is also a CRIMINAL and sue-able offence for someone to sell/buy data for a number they don’t own.

I did some maths and found that using the 13 kbps Full rate GSM pipe [Like Zain do for the clearest calls], a minute of a voice call would be 97.5 Kilobytes big. I stand corrected, but this means that if ALL the 15M Safcom sim cards were to be put in actual phones and all made calls there would be 7.5 Million dialogs using 697.37 Gigabytes of data per hour [A mere 16.736 TB per day]. With a Terastation Live 20 TB Sata harddisk of 10K rpm retailing at USD 200, It is hard to imagine a MSP would fail to build a data center to store this for 1 year+. But Who am I to argue.

Unfortunately, this being Kenya, all one needed to access my call records was just one disgruntled/under-paid/bored/corruptible Safaricom employee and all my records were public property. MTN Uganda did a better job when my calls were being tracked and an Employee called Emma Mudolla was fired in relation to this.

So, Working with Sally,  I made a prank call to one of my should-not-call-according-to-her numbers and when I was drilled on that after getting home that evening, I smiled. Safaricom system tracks who accesses client calls and at what time. So I emailed Sally and told her to check. Then the strangest thing happened. Until today, Sally no longer takes my calls or responds to my emails. Why Sally stopped helping me when we had cornered the snitch is still a mystery.

It would really mean alot if Safaricom could help me in eliminating this low-life pest. In Zain, A friend of mine had such issues and the snitches were flushed like the ectoplasm they were.

Back to code.

-Salim, Idd.