This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum
The UK government wants to crackdown on “snatch thefts” of smartphones; an estimated 78,000 Brits had their phones stolen on the streets in the year up to March 2024 – a rise of over 150% compared to the previous 12 months. The government wants a technology solution, but technology by itself might not be able to address the root cause. … [visit site to read more]
Safaricom and Mastercard announced on Thursday that they have signed a partnership to accelerate adoption of payment acceptance and cross-border remittance services in Kenya.
Under the terms of the partnership, Safaricom will embed Mastercard’s omnichannel acceptance solutions for the 636,000 merchants using Safaricom’s mobile money service M-Pesa.
Safaricom said that combining M-Pesa’s extensive merchant network and Mastercard’s global payment infrastructure will scale digital payments across Kenya by making more seamless, secure, and scalable payment solutions available to merchants. That in turn would also enable them to serve customers across global markets.
The partnership will also boost remittance services, streamlining cross-border transactions efficiently, said Safaricom’s chief financial services officer Esther Waititu.
“This collaboration with Mastercard unlocks new opportunities for M-Pesa merchants,” Waititu said in a statement. “By combining our expertise with Mastercard’s global acceptance network, we are enabling businesses to provide more efficient and frictionless payment solutions to their customers, both in Kenya and beyond.”
According to analyst firm GlobalData, Kenya’s mobile wallet payments market has grown at a rate of 12.7% CAGR between 2020 and 2024, driven by a rise in consumer spending and a high consumer preference for mobile-based payments. GlobalData is forecasting 5.7% growth in 2024 to reach KES8.4 trillion (US$60.1 billion).
The firm credits mobile wallet growth in Kenya to several factors, from the popularity of M-Pesa to the rising popularity of QR code-based payments, which itself has been helped along by the introduction of the Kenya Quick Response Code (KE-QR Code) Standard last year.
As of July 2024, M-Pesa had over 51 million customers.
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According to Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), working in partnership with EkkoSense across 20 of the company’s UK data centres has led to an average saving of 15% in data centre cooling energy usage.
In environmental terms, this means reducing the company’s carbon footprint by around 760 tonnes per year. In financial terms, it’s a reduction in energy bills of over £1 million a year.
These savings have been achieved through better understanding the data centres’ existing energy usage, leveraging various monitoring and analytics solutions from EkkoSense. These include using IoT sensors, AI analytics, and digital twin technology.
“With our software collecting thousands of data points every five minutes – adding to the millions of data points already collected, we’re able to continually refine the effectiveness of our machine learning algorithms for Virgin Media O2,” said Dean Boyle, EkkoSense’s CEO. “Having access to this level of real-time insight means that Virgin Media O2’s operations team are able to track how their data centres are performing from a cooling, power and capacity perspective. They are also able to identify further energy optimisation opportunities in terms of cooling energy usage and overall savings.”
This additional insight from EkkoSense has allowed VMO2 to adjust its energy usage in real-time to meet demand, enabling them to run more efficiently.
“In partnership with EkkoSense, we’ve optimised our data centres so they operate efficiently, using real-time data so we can make airflow and cooling improvements, resulting in significant cooling energy savings,” explained Adrian Lazenby, Head of Technical Site Engineering and Delivery at VMO2.
In recent years, the data centre industry has experienced a surge in growth, much of which is related to the ongoing boom in AI. However, providing energy – particularly renewable energy – for these power-hungry data centres, remains a major challenge. Indeed, we have even seen data centre projects rejected recently due to fears that the local energy grids could not support the additional demand.
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Also in the news:
Meta resumes use of UK user posts to train its AI models
Verizon’s 4,800 job cuts will cost over $1.9 billion
CMA questions Vodafone–Three merger after second probe
Four bits of expansion news, two domestic and two international: … [visit site to read more]
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This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reached a settlement with telco giant AT&T, fining them $13 million for their lack of oversight over customers’ data security.
Back in January 2023, bad actors gained access to the data of 8.9 million AT&T customers via a cyberattack on an unnamed third-party cloud vendor.
According to the FCC, this vendor was used by AT&T “to generate and host personalized video content, including billing and marketing videos” for the affected customers.
As part of the vendor’s service agreement with AT&T, the company was required to destroy or return customer data once it was not longer needed. However, the FCC claims that AT&T did not enforce these obligations, thereby creating the conditions for the data theft to take place.
Customer data stolen included that from the period 2015 to 2017, which should have been deleted in 2017 or 2018.
Today, following an investigation, the FCC has fined AT&T $13 million for its failure to protect consumer data.
“The Communications Act makes clear that carriers have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumer data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning for digital age data breaches,” said FCC chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel. “Carriers must take additional precautions given their access to sensitive information, and we will remain vigilant in ensuring that’s the case no matter which provider a customer chooses.”
As part of the settlement with the FCC, AT&T will be required to increase its data security and supply chain integrity practices, as well a carry out annual compliance audits.
It is worth noting that this is not the only cybersecurity breach of AT&T being investigated by the FCC. Earlier this summer, AT&T revealed a data breach that took place in April affecting roughly 109 million customers – almost the company’s entire subscriber base.
The FCC’s investigation into this incident is still ongoing.
Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news with Total Telecom’s daily newsletter
Also in the news:
Meta resumes use of UK user posts to train its AI models
Verizon’s 4,800 job cuts will cost over $1.9 billion
CMA questions Vodafone–Three merger after second probe
Four bits of international news: … [visit site to read more]
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.
