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Products I want to see from Safaricom, Zain, Orange

Ah, the uninhibited joy of wishful thinking. After Safaricom introduced Voice SMS - a product that I had dreamed of since I first used a mobile phone - I started thinking "hey, perhaps I can voice some of my other fanciful mobile phone product ideas, and someone may just take notice"? Well, here goes ... the following list are some of the next products I'd like to see from the trio of Safaricom, Zain and Orange.

  1. An SMS autoresponder. Everytime you get an SMS you can optionally send back a response like "Thanks for your SMS I'll get back to you", or "Sorry I'm not able to respond to your SMS right now but I'll do so as soon as I'm able" It would be quite useful, especially when your phone is off/out of reach/on divert.
  2. The ability to convert unused airtime back to cash (although I know this makes absolutely no financial sense to these companies, it would be really cool!)
  3. Free voicemail depositing.
  4. Mobile Number Porting, just let me use my Safaricom number on the network I prefer whether its Zain or Orange.
That's all I can think of now, feel free to add your own
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Comments

Anonymous said…
I'd like to see VOIP cut down call costs drastically.

It isn't too hard to route the calls through the internet is it? (I have no idea :p)

I'm thinking once you make the call it goes through a skype-like technology to make it that much cheaper.
October 04, 2008 1:13 PM
Peter said…
Virtual airtime!
Now that most of us have several SIM cards, would it not be nice if I could load money into some virtual account and use that to buy credit on any line I want?

My bone of contention is: I have credit on my safcom line but none in my zain line but i want to call a zain number and the shop nearest is closed!
October 04, 2008 6:14 PM
Harry Karanja said…
@dr sleek

the idea of virtual airtime is very cool. i'm thinking one way of doing this is just making M-PESA a cross-network service: for example, let me buy Zain airtime with M-PESA.
October 07, 2008 6:32 PM
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