"...I'd like to suggest that you come together as a community and register as a VAS /Application/Content provider company..."

Mr. Aki,
You literary read my mind there. I passed this suggestion to Simon Mbuthia (I believe he is the chairman of Mobile Monday). I don't think I mentioned it in the list.

Are there any other people/companies willing to take this up? My suggestion was that we as developers register our own VAS, etc (just like u said) and we only take out a tiny percentage of revenue that will go to the day to day running of the VAS company. The VAS company is basically a shell.
Each person/company will own a stake in the VAS company depending on their contribution to starting the VAS company. The bigger the stake, the less percentage that is taken from revenue to run the VAS... I believe everyone gets the idea.
 


--- On Mon, 4/26/10, aki <aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:

From: aki <aki275@googlemail.com>
Subject: [Skunkworks] Debugging the USSD myth : An open discussion to Developers, Telco network engineers
To: "Skunkworks forum" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Date: Monday, April 26, 2010, 8:21 PM

It's interesting what basic research into a subject does to open up
your mind to ideas/facts. What I discovered is the wrong impression
being created about this service. Here are a couple of pointers,
corrections welcome :

1) To deal with any Telco you will need to be a licensed provider.
There are 2 categories, Application or Content Service provider.
2) You need to partner and not compete with a Telco.
3) If you are serious about your social networks sites/applications
and want to develop into a commercial service, Point 1 above applies.
Without it, you can only live on the internet as a blog or website and
it can be only that.

It is a fact the Content developers like Mobile Planet, Cellulant and
others are dealing with Telcos. Cellulant am sure is partnering with
Safaricom on content and has USSD access. In 2008/09 it was selected a
top SME performer with an annual turnover of almost 1million USD.
Cellulant is registered with CCK as a VAS. ( correction needed ). I
recently remember reading an article that AT&T mobile was, until
recently, restricting voip services over its mobile network. There are
many telcos who do not even allow instant messenger. We are so luck in
kenya that we do not face such problems so why in the world would you
want to develop an application that seeks to take business away from a
Telco?

What does it mean to upcoming and established application/web and
mobile developers seeking to go commercial? As long as your approach
is without any legal entity, you will find it impossible to get
anywhere. But we all know these things are expensive and no one can go
solo. I'd like to suggest that you come together as a community and
register as a VAS /Application/Content provider company. This will
create a level of trust in the market, especially if you are listed in
the CCK licenses/site as a provider. You can bypass any middle persons
since you develop the applications/sites yourself and I'm sure Telcos
will find it very interesting to deal with you as an entity.

There is no guarantee that this will work or whether a telco will even
deal with you, but I see it as a logical step towards moving away from
the grey and un-registered internet and into the real commercial world
where you are respected as an entity of professionals that you are. I
hope this helps those who are seeking to expand and get established.

I'm outt here, ciao! :-)
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