A new service will bring e-mail services to rural and urban areas across the African country of Lesotho via any mobile phone, more than doubling the population’s access to e-mail.p>A new service will bring e-mail services to rural and urban areas across the African country of Lesotho via any mobile phone, more than doubling the population’s access to e-mail.
Lesotho’s highly literate population struggles to access vital information, such as healthcare, travel and educational resources as, according to the International Telecommunication Union, only 3.4 per cent of the population use the Internet.
Expanding the country’s access to e-mail via entry level, low end mobile phones will consequently improve access to information, communications with friends and family, and trade.
Empowering the customer base
Econet Telecom Lesotho is the first African mobile service operator to enable their entire customer base to send and receive e-mail via ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message Optimiser service.
The new service, which goes live on 25th September 2009, enables Econet Telecom Lesotho to offer two-way e-mail to their entire mobile customer base, without the end user requiring any Internet access, device upgrades or application downloads.
Mpine Tente, Head of Department Retail and Customer Service of Econet Telecom Lesotho, said, “We are proud to be one of the first companies in Africa to significantly improve the population’s access to e-mail via ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message Optimiser service which opens up e-mail communications to our entire subscriber base irrespective of what phone they are using.
“Our mobile phone customers can now use e-mail to share important information, communicate with family overseas or friends in another country, or even do business with people just a few miles down the road, all for the cost of a local SMS. Message Optimiser sends and receives e-mails via SMS to any
mobile phone.”
Specialising in unified messaging
ForgetMeNot Africa is a specialist in unified messaging for telecommunications operators.
Their unique Handset Initiation (HI) technology bypasses the need for Internet access and opens up the service to all mobile phone users, even those in the remotest of areas.
Jeremy George, Chief Operating Officer of ForgetMeNot Africa commented, “Currently Lesotho’s population has to share access to a little over 2,000 PCs connected to the Internet, most of which are in urban areas.
Availability of smartphones, laptops and even fixed line Internet connections is very low for this highly literate country.
Using ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message Optimiser, Econet Telecom Lesotho will bring mobile e-mail to the entire Econet Telecom Lesotho subscriber base of both post and prepay customers across the country.
“The service will transform the country’s low grade mobile phones into a stepping stone across the global digital divide.”
