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While a national consumer promotion would not normally be big news on these pages, the recently announced promotion by new market entrant Safaricom Ethiopia is possibly more significant than most.

Safaricom Ethiopia has this week launched its first national consumer promotion, one that will see over one million customers rewarded for joining and using products and services on the new network.

The 13-week promotion will award customers unique codes for buying a Safaricom SIM card or recharging their lines with airtime, buying packages or using WhatsApp bundles.

Each customer will receive a maximum of ten unique codes per day that will enter them into a draw to win either daily, bi-weekly or monthly prizes that include: cars, bajajs (three-wheel vehicles), motorbikes, smartphones and tablets, and bonus airtime.

While Anwar Soussa, CEO, Safaricom Ethiopia, refers to the event as being about “saying thank you to our customers in our own small way”, it involves a strong incentive to spend money or sign up. For every 10 Birr (about 19 US cents) spent either on airtime top up or buying voice, SMS or data packages, existing Safaricom customers across the country will receive one code.

New customers who join the network by buying a SIM card and topping up within 24 hours will receive three codes. Seven codes will be awarded for those using the free 1GB WhatsApp package.

The promotion, which is also open to Safaricom’s enterprise customers, runs until the fourth of July and will reward over one million customers throughout a 13-week period across regions in Ethiopia where the Safaricom network has been switched on.

This is further evidence that Safaricom Ethiopia means business in a market in which rival, and incumbent, Ethio Telecom has a strong head start with somewhere in the region of 70 million subscribers.

Still, the new arrival isn’t doing badly. Since starting its operations with customer pilots in August 2022, and following its national launch ceremony in October 2022, Safaricom Ethiopia has grown its subscriber base to 2.8 million customers across Ethiopia.

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Authored by John Bonczek, Chief Revenue Officer, fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty

We are in the midst of a massive shift in how people work, communicate, and interact in society. With just a tip of the AI-generated capabilities being introduced, the world as we know it is about to change in ways we are unable to even imagine. In order for this new future to become a reality, digital infrastructure must be fortified to support the insatiable data it will eventually deliver. As a result, networks responsible for … [visit site to read more]

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Unite Private Networks has a new metro market in mind, and it’s not within their usual midwestern and southwestern territory. Yesterday they announced an expansion of their footprint into Augusta GA. … [visit site to read more]

Operator Ooredoo Qatar and Reailize, a company that says it injects automation intelligence into every aspect of telco operations, have announced that Ooredoo Qatar has implemented Reailize’s Continuous Assurance (CA) solution to digitize its network operations centre (NOC) and provide what is described as a single pane of glass into the health of its network, service and customer experience.

To ensure a seamless customer experience, Ooredoo Qatar recently partnered with Reailize to transform its network operations using the CA Solution. This was put to the test at the World Cup when Ooredoo Qatar experienced record-breaking data traffic exceeding 800 terabytes, and more than 12 million voice calls.

Sports events taking place in Qatar generate an enormous surge in mobile communication and put significant pressure on the network. To prepare for this, Ooredoo Qatar leveraged Reailize’s Continuous Assurance (CA) and Anomaly Detection solution to drive network and operational optimization squarely focused on customer experience.

The Reailize team of domain experts partnered with the operations team at Ooredoo to achieve real-time monitoring, early detection of potential network issues, and proactively address customer and service impacts. The CA solution spans the Radio Access Network (RAN), core, IMS, and transmission networks and monitors 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G domains.

Reailize combines automation and artificial intelligence (AI) with customer experience measurements to detect network anomalies, identify root causes of associated degradations, and recommend actions based on predicted customer impact.

This will, it seems, continue. Ooredoo Qatar says it is adopting CA as a unified solution, providing customer experience-driven preventive, proactive, and predictive assurance, enabling the company to focus on achieving optimal network performance and customer satisfaction while maintaining seamless operations.

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