The future of Internet cafes’ scattered in various part of the country is
uncertain following the launching of GPRS/EDGE programme by a local mobile phone
provider, which offers internet services faster and in a much more convenient
way.
TIGO’s IT Network and Operations manager, Dakshit Pandya, said, ”the service
enables the mobile phone network customer to browse the Internet right on his
palm handset and computers through their GPRS/EDGE platform”.
He told this paper during the launch of the new product in Dar es Salaam on
Thursday that his company was not worried about international competition, but
was more concerned about providing local customers with satisfactory service.
The term GPRS stands for General Pocket Radio Services, a standard for wireless
communication, which runs at the speed of up to 115 kilobytes per second,
compared to the current Circuit Switch Data (CSD) system that runs at a speed of
9.6 kilobytes per second.
This makes it much more speedy there by facilitating instant communication among
the users, he said.
Once a customer is connected or compatible to the GPRS, s/he would have access
to the Internet from where he is locatedthat is without popping into an Internet
caf頡s all he would need would be availed from his handset, said Pandya.
He said this is the first ever of such service to be launched in the country and
plans were underway to enable customers communicate even when they are outside
the country, particularly in the East Africa region and Europe.
He said there are more advantages once one is GPRS compatible. He mentioned some
as accessing to the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), from which one would be
able to send and receive pictures, images, video clips from one phone to anoter
or to the computer.
On the other hand, the launch of the GPRS would make the TIGO mobile phone
customers to enjoy the Mobile Internet Service known as the WEB. On this,
customers would be able to receive high-speed data connections using mobile
phone as the modern.
In order to enjoy the services, the subscribers are advised to use GPRS
compatible handsets.
”Once a subscriber posses a GPRS compatible handset and wants to be connected,
he should call 100 and asked for availability of the facility,” he said.
He said that TIGO has been growing very fast since it launched the brand as it
has been taking the customers by surprise. He added that there has been an
abrupt increase in its coverage with 500 service sites.
The company plans to expand more services by adding 300 more sites with a view
to offer better services to its more than 900,000 customers.
What makes the new TIGO service unique is its affordability since the charge
would not be based on time taken to access the Internet, but rather the amount
of material downloaded or uploaded, Pandya said.
On MMS charges, customers would pay 80/- per 150 Kilobytes; 300/- per 1 megabyte
in case of WAP service users; and 30,000/- per 300 megabytes and 50/- for each
extra kilobyte downloaded or uploaded, he said.
