Category: Telecom Trends

Africa is on the cusp of a significant telecom-led transformation. International telecom and technology companies are leveraging increased investments in the continent to be a part of the coming growth.

To build improved technology and telecommunication services in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa-based Solis Investments Group recently announced its strategic partnership with Globe Teleservices.

Backed by a $500 million investment from a US-based development finance corporation, Kenya-based Safaricom is building a new mobile network in Ethiopia.

From 2021, he African Telecom sector is recording significant revenues. Major players like Vodacom, MTN, and Safaricom have reported revenues of up to $6 billion. To facilitate digital payments and transactions, the Central Bank of Nigeria has recently launched its digital currency, eNaira.

Coming back to the technology sector, Liquid Telecom, Africa’s largest Internet and cloud computing company, recently closed a $620 million bond sale. This deal will provide cost-effective broadband fibre connection to over 2.7 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Buoyed by the growth of telecom, let us look at the five most influential industry sectors in Africa.

5 Industry Sectors Influenced by Telecom-Led Transformation

Africa is economically the fastest-growing continent after Asia. The growth of the middle-class community has been a prime driver of economic growth in the region. Adding to that is the sheer dynamism of the emerging technology and startup ecosystem that is pushing the boundaries of innovation. The telecommunication sector stands at the centre of this blooming ecosystem by enabling better mobile phone connectivity across the region.

As compared to a global average of 3%, the mobile phone market in Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow by 4.6% by 2025.

Along those lines, here are five industry sectors in Africa that are influenced the most by the Telecom revolution:

1. Banking & Finance

The telecom revolution in Africa is enabling the digitalization of cash and payments and banking across the region’s largely unbanked (or underbanked) population. Mobile Money solutions are exploding and adoption is surging. So much so, that these players are being seen at the forefront of worldwide innovation in the space. Traditional financial services and banking are also changing.

ChiedzaMadzima of Fitch Solutions emphasizes that international investments into resources like bonds and loans in Africa will have a “positive impact” in the long-term future. The invested capital is being utilized towards physical infrastructure, thus improving the bankability of such projects.

U.S-based Africell has secured a $105 million loan facility from Gemcorp. The company will invest a significant part of the acquired capital into building a mobile network in Angola, which is looking to boost its fintech industry sector.

2. Education

Education is another industry sector that communication technology can impact by reducing overall illiteracy rates in Africa. A recent UNESCO report highlighted Sub-Saharan Africa as the region with the highest rate of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of the children between the ages of 6-11 are out of the formal school system.

As more schools closed worldwide (including in Africa) during the pandemic, technology boosted online learning for students in their homes.

Education ministries are now working with telecom operators to avoid charging any data tariffs for online learning websites. For example, South Africa had already implemented a “Zero rating” to provide free access to online learning material.

For inclusive education, the UNESCO report highlighted the following 3-step process:

1. Identify technology innovations for educational systems with maximum potential.
2. Test the best innovations with a specific context.
3. Adapt and scale them for the best results.

3. Mobile Payments

Nearly 60% of online traffic in the African continent comes from mobile phones. Mobile phones are used more for data-based applications like online chats, video content, and online banking than for voice. As mobile usage continues to increase, Africa is witnessing a shift towards mobile-based payments.

A Citi Group research found that three African countries, namely Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda, are among the ten countries to adopt mobile payments. Egypt and Nigeria, at that time, were two more countries developing their mobile money solutions.

The global pandemic has largely contributed to the emergence of mobile payments in this region. Leading mobile operators are also racing to launch their mobile payment platforms. For instance, Airtel Nigeria CEO Segun Ogunsanya talked about his company’s plans to venture into the mobile money market.

Read More: Why It’s Time for Telecom Companies to Modernize their Tech Strategy.

4. Technology Startups

Thanks to its young workforce, Africa is now the host to many startup companies in the technology space. Technology startup financing is expected to reach a value of $90 billion by 2030. The tech revolution is Africa’s response to mounting challenges like inequalities, climate change, food production, education, and healthcare.

However, tech entrepreneurs & investors continue to face structural reform barriers within Africa. This includes a fragmented market of over 54 countries, complex government regulations, and a lack of digital skills. But industry leaders need a simplified regulatory framework to ensure compliance, which can boost the startup environment. As a result, to boost its digital transformation, African governments must work together to connect their economies.

5. Cryptocurrencies

In addition to mobile payments and startups, Africa’s younger population is driving the growth of digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. As compared to other developing economies, cryptocurrency is still at a nascent stage in Africa. However, a Foresight Africa report states that Africa is the third-fastest growing market for cryptocurrencies.

Similarly, the  2021 Geography of Cryptocurrency report states that cryptocurrency asset volume grew by $105.6 billion in Africa between July 2020 to June 2021. That represents a percentage increase of 1200%.

Going ahead, cryptocurrencies can play a pivotal role in foreign remittances and banking services. Remittance inflows represent the “lifeline” for many poor African families. However, remittance fees are among the highest in Africa. Cryptocurrencies can potentially benefit Africans by eliminating any intermediaries.

Conclusion

According to a UN prediction, over 50% of the global population growth by 2050 will happen in Africa. As a result, the development of the telecom sector will assuredly boost foreign investments and enable the continent to achieve digital transformation.

With its global presence, Globe Teleservices provides hassle-free and cost-efficient solutions for its Telecom customers. We help in developing a range of mobility solutions and cloud services.

Moreover, we can help you pursue your digital transformation journey. Get in touch with us today.

The focus on security is rising as businesses digitally transform, the world of work globally evolves, and collaboration across borders proliferates to drive innovation.

Business employees today are no longer operating on their networks when accessing data or applications. Therefore, there’s a growing concern about data breaches and ransomware — mandating data and privacy compliance regulations to standardize robust security policies.

To that end, enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) has become non-negotiable to increase protection against cyber-attacks, phishing, data breaches, etc.

The ABC of MFA

The digital landscape encourages consumers to use the web and mobile applications to access various services. Businesses, as such, are at a greater liability to store data securely and ensure that cybercriminals don’t exploit user login to gain entry into critical systems.

Regrettably, password or username-based authentication is now unreliable and unwieldy. Such authentication systems make it difficult for users to remember and manage passwords across multiple accounts — precisely why they start repeating them.

Passwords lacking complexity further weaken security and make it easy for malicious elements to acquire data and information using malware, hacking, and phishing. Mobile number frauds, for example, can have devastating effects. Scammers can access bank accounts, social media, emails, and more, causing havoc. As more enterprise users employ mobile and personal devices, the data across enterprise networks needs to be secured.

Therefore, MFA authentication becomes essential as a part of a security strategy since it employs multiple methods to affirm identity and authority. For businesses offering telecom services, including virtual networks of any size, implementing MFA assures data and information security.

Phone-based authentication has become predominant since the rise of smartphones, and as such, global lawmakers are treating MFA more like a necessity. Australia, for example, is looking at making MFA mandatory for telcos. In Australia, number porting now needs mobile companies to verify users and subscribers in several different ways to identify fraud and discourage fraudsters who scam mobile phone users.

Two-factor authentication is one of the most common forms of MFA. While 2-FA is better than simple passwords, telcos now also need to enable hardware and software authentication tokens generated with a mobile app. For this, telecom operators have to ensure that they are employing a platform that allows them to enable MFA easily while giving them proactive insights into any anomaly that could signal a potential breach.

Employing an MFA platform that helps users and future-proofs businesses is emerging as a strategic priority — this explains its soaring market value (at over 10% CAGR).

However, this platform must deliver comprehensive services that enable end-to-end multi-factor authentication. This includes token generation, token delivery, and token authentication.

Deliver a Multi-Layered Protection Framework

The MFA platform has to deliver a multi-layered protection framework that verifies the user and identifies the transaction identities of the user.

It must also employ a zero-trust framework since the security perimeters have now blurred with rising smartphone proliferation. A zero-trust framework enables agility, visibility, and greater control and makes it easier to improve the security stand by helping businesses stay ahead of the threats curve.

Enable Token-Based Authentication

MFA platforms must allow businesses to enable token-based authentication and simplify the authentication process. Token-based authentication sends a request to the server employing a username and a password. The server validates this input based on the values registered in the credential database. Once confirmed, the server responds with a token.

An MFA platform must allow businesses to generate time-based tokens to prevent misuse. Besides, it is essential for the token length and expiry time to be configurable according to the needs of the business.

Allow Multi-Channel Token Delivery

Token delivery has to be reliable, scalable, and secure. The MFA platform thus has to employ a robust token delivery system that uses multiple channels such as SMS, Flash Calls, data Voice, email, Push Notification, and operator verification.

Enabling concurrent delivery of OTPs on two or more channels further increases security and impedes malicious efforts.

Identify Anomalies and Offer Intelligent Insights

MFA platforms have to employ new-age technologies like AI and ML to proactively identify anomalous behavior on the network. These technologies can also be used to identify changes or drifts in customer behavior to make security more proactive.

The platform should also offer clear and detailed, data-backed insights. Identifying the preferred and most cost-effective channel for OTP messages and gaining insights into a delivery percentage, average cost saved, and top 5 error codes of failure on SMS, Voice, Flash Call, and Email become essential to improve security and cost efficiencies.

Moreover, such platforms must ensure that they enhance user experience over the authentication journey. This includes having mechanisms that allow Mobile Out of Coverage messages and information on failed past transactions over the selected channel.

In case of an undelivered OTP or if an OTP input doesn’t happen in time over a specific channel, the platform should have a CTA that tries out other OTP channels, such as Flash Call or Voice dial-in.

In a Nutshell

As an enterprise’s financial and social transactions move online, telcos and many other industries must look at their authentication systems and evaluate if they can navigate the evolving threat landscape.

Operating systems, service providers, and account-based platforms need MFA. As such, experience in navigating the requirements and exceptions becomes essential.

We can help with that. Reach out to us today to explore more.

Most companies understand that customer satisfaction is key to long-term sustainability and growth. But delighting customers in today’s digital era requires you to constantly seek their feedback and learn how you can further enhance the experiences they have across channels and touchpoints. Read on as we discuss how you can build customer relationships across channels.

The Growth of Omnichannel Communication

Offering a compelling omnichannel experience was once a competitive differentiator for brands. Today, it has become a mandate for survival. The main driver for this has been the sudden and widespread growth of the e-commerce industry, with the global market expected to total $5.55 trillion in 2022.

As more and more customers across the world use a variety of channels, such as websites and mobile apps (even brick-and-mortar stores and shops), they expect brands to offer seamless communication experiences across each of these channels.

Successful omnichannel communication requires organizations to map individual customer journeys by determining the channels they use, the touchpoints they engage with and the experiences they encounter. And then, they need to create a seamless experience that allows customers to flow from one channel to another seamlessly. But this entails redefining the way brands communicate with their customers.

The Challenges of Building Sustained and Consistent Customer Relationships

Although omnichannel communication is a critical component of business success, the challenges of building sustained and consistent customer relationships are many:

• Getting a single view of customers: As businesses get increasingly global, customers are spread across different regions and territories. This causes a big challenge for organizations as they cannot get a single view of customers across different locations and channels – mainly because different teams use different systems and approaches for customer communication.
• Quickly responding to customer requests: Today’s customers expect organizations to respond to their requests/demands in real-time and resolve their issues within a few hours. But with customers using different devices and channels, ensuring each customer is attended to via a channel and in a language they’re most comfortable with isn’t easy.
• Integrating interaction data from different sources: Combining different interaction channels and converting them to one holistic customer journey requires combining data from diverse sources. More often than not, the data formats are as varied as the number of channels and stored in siloed systems that poorly integrate with other systems.
• Delivering seamless journeys: Offering an omnichannel customer experience that seamlessly weaves through different interaction channels is another hurdle that organizations have to cross to boost customer response rates. Brands must be available across different devices and platforms to ensure the different touchpoints are connected, so customers can advance through the entire customer journey without interruptions, dropping off or picking up from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.

How an Intelligent Omnichannel Solution Can Change That

An intelligent omnichannel solution can help organizations understand customer needs and take steps to improve customer experience. Investing in such a solution can allow companies to reduce the cost-to-service, limit churn, and increase customer value.

Using comprehensive analytics, a modern platform can collect insights that matter the most in the customer journey and empower organizations to act on these insights and improve the products, services, and experiences they offer customers. Here’s how:

• Reach customers across channels: An intelligent omnichannel solution can measure customer experience across channels, including website, POS, email, mobile app, and more. It can pick up conversations from one channel and continue them across others, delivering a seamless omnichannel experience to customers across various touchpoints.
• Get in-depth actionable insights: Using an advanced solution, enterprises can unearth actionable insights and capture real-time customer emotions. Modern and intuitive dashboards can provide necessary insights into customer concerns and needs while presenting ideas and suggestions to improve customer experience.
• Respond in real-time: A modern solution can enable enterprises to respond to customers in real-time. The minute a customer interacts at a touchpoint, they can converse with them in their preferred language to boost satisfaction and response rate. Since a modern solution uses an interactive conversational UI, companies can reduce drop-offs and maintain their CSAT scores.
• Measure customer feedback:Via Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES), an intelligent omnichannel solution can aid in measuring customer satisfaction, evaluating the likelihood of customers recommending the brand, determining the level of customer service quality, and more.
• Resolve customer queries quickly:A unified communication solution can help categorize, assign and track issues and take them to closure. Via an integrated action module, enterprises can respond to customer queries instantly and resolve them with the expected speed and quality.

Conclusion

Organizations need to provide seamless and consistent experiences across all communication channels to convert customers into die-hard brand advocates. So, it’s only natural to invest in an intelligent omnichannel solution to reach customers across channels, get in-depth, actionable insights, respond to them in real time, and measure customer feedback to improve their overall experience. Let us show you how telecom brands around the world have enabled new opportunities by tapping the omnichannel needs of their customers and users.

The world of business messaging has come a long way. With positive customer experiences known to increase customer spending by up to 140%, organizations are looking to put customers at the centre of their communications strategy and build longer and stronger relationships. But to successfully do this, they need to move away from standard content and deliver push messages and targeted campaigns that are more aligned with customer expectations.

At the recently concluded MEF Summit “Future of Mobile”, experts from around the world provided several insights into the future of messaging. Read on to learn all about the latest trends, threats, and opportunities in the world of business messaging.

Trends

The future of business messaging isn’t about adopting a one-size-fits-all strategy to communicate and interact with customers. It is about contacting the right ones at the right time with messages that address their specific needs.

By reaching out and engaging with customers over their preferred messaging channels for marketing, sales, and customer support, enterprises can enable easy and convenient conversations and pave the way for great customer experiences.

Let’s look at the top three trends that are going to shape the realm of business messaging in 2022 and beyond:

• Metaverse communication: The many discussions (and excitement) around the Metaverse surge have proven time and again that business messaging is set to shape its ongoing evolution. As users begin to shift to a digital and 3D version of themselves, consistent and convenient business messaging will play a critical role in the end-user experience. Right from speech-to-text conversions to communication via virtual keyboards: the opportunities for companies to enable messaging in the virtual world will be aplenty.
• Omnichannel messaging: Companies looking to capitalize on the wave of transformation will have to move from plain-Jane SMS strategies to omnichannel messaging. Right from voice and video to other types of rich mobile content; brands will have to engage in conversational messaging – and not just one-way communication to drive meaningful engagement. For example, for customers who have just placed an online order, it would pay to build customer trust by providing real-time updates on the delivery status and wait times while also allowing them to connect with a live agent on demand.
• Rich and personalized experiences: Good customer experiences are key to influencing brand loyalty; according to a study, 73% of customers agree that customer experience helps to drive their buying decision. Therefore, to make a difference, companies will have to move away from boring text to rich media, transform how they connect with customers and provide experiences that deliver value. Instead of just sending random messages and campaign content on a bunch of channels, companies will need to talk to customers on channels they are most comfortable with and on which they want to be spoken to. They will need to leverage context history to deliver content, recommendations, and campaigns that are tailored to make every engagement more meaningful.

Threats

Owning, sustaining, and managing a complex relationship with customers is not without its set of challenges. Let’s look at the top challenges companies have to contend with while making the most of all the innovations in the realm of business messaging:

• Authentication: As organizations move towards personalized and rich forms of business messaging, authentication will remain one of the biggest challenges to overcome. With cases of money laundering, network infiltration, trolling, IPR theft, and sharing of misinformation surging, companies will have to look beyond SMS authentication and invest in advanced authentication and authorization tools that ensure only authorized people have access to business or customer data.
• Identity: With business communication getting increasingly digitized, organizations face a tough time in identifying genuine people and managing relationships with them. Verifying digital identities on the web and validating 3D avatars in the Metaverse requires organizations to invest in modern identity verification technologies to tie each digital identity to a physical human being while meeting a sundry list of emerging privacy requirements.
• Security: Security is yet another challenge facing the realm of business messaging. In the digital world, the probability and ease of stolen identities are immense, organizations need to establish strict security strategies and put effective controls in place that protect not only the physical identities of people but also their digital ones.

Opportunities

Allowing customers to reach out to businesses through their preferred channels, giving them the freedom to respond at their own pace, and being available 24×7 are just some of the steps businesses can take to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. If you want to move away from one-way, static SMS communication toward omnichannel rich messaging, here are opportunities you need to capitalize on:

• Leverage practical tools across the mobile value chain to deliver a seamless and secure messaging experience
• Raise awareness of issues around trust in mobile products and services within the ecosystem for stakeholders to take necessary steps
• Establish industry best practices across your enterprises across omnichannel messaging, personalization, security, and authentication
• Create a more transparent, innovative, and fraud-free market to boost business revenue while improving the trust customers have in your business

The doors rich business messaging opens for organizations big and small are many. Unfortunately, many haven’t tapped into this massive enterprise messaging opportunity. With customer-focused companies known to increase their revenue 1.4x faster than non-customer-focused companies and with businesses that prioritize customer experiences enjoying a revenue increase of 4-8% higher than their competitors, to bring conversations to wherever the customer is, you need to evolve toward a more sophisticated and tech-oriented way of sending messages to customers and create connections that count.

Reach out to us to know how you can successfully embrace the latest trends, thwart evolving threats, and capitalize on the many opportunities.