SMS Spam: Stopping The Flood Before It Happens

Is it just me, or is there an increasing amount of unsolicited SMS messages hitting my phone? First were all the Access Bank messages. Then there are the Dana Air messages I have received over the past few days. It hasn’t become a really irritating issue yet, but email spam wasn’t either in the early days. Now it makes up 80% of all email traffic worldwide.

Email spam is evil for many reasons. Many times it offers illegal or questionable items or activities. Other times, spam could actually be a phishing attack, a trick that ends up with your computer infected with viruses, your financial information compromised or any number of evil things. At the very least, email spam takes up so much of your mailbox and it distracts you and wastes your time. It forces businesses to spend so much on tools that block spam from your email. Expensive email storage is taken up by these messages if the spam blockers are not efficient enough.

email spam has forced legitimate businesses who want to connect with customers or potential customers to jump through so many hoops to get email messages to people. So businesses have to get people’s permissions upfront before they can send them email messages (“opting in” is the preferred term), they need to provide a means for people who have already opted in to opt out. Many countries have laws against spam.

Before email spam, there was what I could call “voice spam”. Telemarketers are often the scourge of US households. Telemarketers call your home to try to convince you to buy stuff. Many times they are making legitimate offers. Other times they are tricksters. Once, while visiting the US three or four years ago the home I stayed in was deluged constantly with phone calls from telemarketers. Not an hour passed without the phone ringing with someone making another offer. The US has systems in place called “No Call” lists in various states and cities. You register to get on “No Call” lists and telemarketers are not allowed to call you. There are legal penalties if the telemarketers call numbers on the list.

Now I said all that to say this: as businesses begin to increasingly use SMS to advertise their products and events, these SMS messages could begin to take on the qualities of spam. As a matter of fact, unlike email spam, which is a problem for ISPs, telecoms service providers actually profit from the flood of messages (they bill the senders). So there is actually a disincentive for them to be part of any attempt to control SMS adverts. However, before it becomes a problem, regulatory bodies (Madam Dora and NCC) and telecoms companies need to set up rules and systems that give users control over whether or not they can be sent advertising text messages, or filter out what messages they can receive. Businesses to which we give our phone information should be explicit in how they intend to use that information before we give it to them. We probably need our own equivalent of no call lists.

Of course, I may just be raising a false alarm. SMS spam may never become a real issue here in Nigeria. More likely though, its only going to be delayed en route to hitting us. The cost of messages may keep this prohibitive for most businesses. On the other hand, the internet has provided mechanisms for making so many expensive things (both good and bad) cheaper to accomplish. Indeed some may not share my viewpoint and see these messages as a source of valuable information and products. Either way you see it, the ability to control your personal communications and decide what reaches you or not, can only be a good thing.

What do you think?

Dej. 

Photo courtesy of G-rated Birdman on Flickr.

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I just installed Snap.com’s widget. It gives a live preview of the page that links point to. Let me know how you like it.

Ignore Us At Your Peril

  Last week I wrote about the multi-storey car park at MMA2 and used it as a point to express my concern about what could potentially be the beginning of decay at that airport. After writing that post, I went over to MMA2's website and submitted a complaint on their help page. In the week since, I have not been contacted by email.

A few weeks ago, I did a piece on MTN in which I criticised their mobile Internet service. Now I didn't send a link to them to them via email, instead I sent them a link on Twitter. I never got an response or a comment and shortly afterward @mtn_nigeria disappeared from Twitter.

One of Nigeria's greatest shames is the abysmal electricity situation. A movement called the Light Up Nigeria Movement (or LightUpNigeria) was started on Twitter and now has its home at www.lightupnigeria.org. LightUpNigeria is intent on using the Internet and other media to raise a groundswell of voices putting pressure on the Nigerian government to address the electricity problem. In fact several events are planned by LightUpNigeria to mark the upcoming Independence Day anniversary.  The movement has even drafted a Proclamation. I have not been able to find any indication that this effort has been acknowledged by the government.

These three examples, particularly the last one, show the ability to use the Internet and its technologies by Nigerians to engage service providers and governments. The problem is the service providers and government are not engaging us in return. Twitter and it’s home-grown clones like NaijaPulse and Kukurooku in particular are excellent tools that can be mined to find out what web-savvy Nigerians thinking and focusing on are and Facebook, is a great place to engage one on one with customers and constituents.

Aside from these tools, there is the Nigerian blogosphere where the more eloquent Nigerians engage in conversations in their blogs on politics, technology, faith, their loves and their pain points. The wealth of Nigeria’s brain trust is freely available on the internet for every business, institution, and government agency to harness for product development, process improvement, idea generation, crime prevention, technological advancement, and societal transformation.

However, they are not listening.

There are over ten million Nigerians – people living in Nigeria – on the Internet. Not to mention the vast number of Nigerians in the Diaspora who remain very relevant to the Nigerian story.  That may account for less than 10% of our population, but we are growing everyday. You can’t ignore us. And I don’t mean filling our inboxes with unsolicited email messages or taking over every whitespace on Facebook. Loy Okezie pointed out that more and more Nigerian businesses are engaging in the use of social media (Facebook, twitter et al), but I am unconvinced that they are using these tools the right way. The day of the one-way blast of adverts is at an end. Mashable recently did an article on how to use social media to collect feedback from customers. Our political and business organisations have to engage us. Hear what we have to say. That encourages us to listen to them in turn. When our voice finds its way into products or processes and we see evidence of that, it wins and keeps our loyalty.

It seems like Barack Obama has been US President forever, but it was only a year ago when he won the election by, amongst other things, engaging the minds and hearts of the Internet generation in the US, a strategy he is continuing as president. Assuming the Republicans were doomed to lose the elections, the other Democratic hopefuls lost out, in part, because they did not realise just how vital it was to capture this demographic. Instead Obama turned them into his army of volunteers. He used the Internet to tell them his vision for the country, and by listening to them, he made them his voice.

We know what Nigeria is now, we are no USA, we do not have the depth of internet penetration that the Americans have. However, a savvy governor or a smart brand can use the Internet to create a movement for unstoppable positive public action or to exponentially extend the power of their brand. LightUpNigeria is doing the reverse – letting the leaders know what we are agitating for, keeping the pressure on. It is extremely unwise for the government not to figure out some way to use this ready, willing, and eminently able movement, virtually presented on platter of gold, to tackle the electricity problem, to “crowd source” the solutions. Nigerians are the among scrappiest people on the planet. We have shown our ability to adapt to the worst and thrive. We can figure it out and show the world a solution that will amaze. The relevant government ministry should actually sponsor the conversation on www.LightUpNigeria.org, give regular updates on progress, highlight the various contractors doing specific projects and inform Nigerians of setbacks.
At the very least they should soothe the beast before it becomes savage.

This post is not about electricity or infrastructure problems. It is about the fact that the coming of the internet age to Nigeria is an end to the inability of the people to speak and be heard. We will speak with our tweets and our blogs and that will eventually become our speaking with our votes and with our money. Listen to us now and one day, when our voice is powerful enough, that will be the sound that will carry you in our high offices, or to the highest pinnacles of business success.

Ignore us and you do it to your peril.

Dej.

Photo Courtesy of mattinnigeria.wordpress.com/

Why does MTN want to charge me 470,000 naira for 3GB of data?

I'm not exaggerating. I did the math. MTN charges 15k per kilobyte for me to access the Internet via my mobile phone. When that is multiplied by 3GB (314572 KB), it comes to four hundred and seventy-one thousand, eight hundred and fifty-nine naira, twenty kobo.

I chose 3GB because MTN offers a standard data package at 10,000 naira per month with a data allowance of 3GB. What this means is that if you exceed 3GB, you get charged 15 kobo for every kilobyte over that 3GB. This may not seem too bad (actually it seems horrible) and would appear to make my point not only moot, but inaccurate. However the caveat is that this 10,000 naira and other packages are only available to you when you buy their wireless 3G modem with a dedicated SIM. In other words, if you have a completely data capable phone such as the iPhone, and most other modern smartphones, you are can only access the Internet with MTN at the 15k per kilobyte charge using your phone. Hence, if you attempted to use the equivalent of their standard data package, then your potential bill is nearly half a million naira.

Nothing on their website suggests the 10,000 naira package is only for their wireless modem or PCMCIA data card. In fact, quite the opposite. However I walked into their service centre at the Palms and asked about using one of their contracts on my 3G phone. The lady there told me it wasn’t possible, that I had to get one of the devices they provide. I didn’t believe her. I figured that she was clueless, until I exchanged a few email messages with MTN and spoke with one of their customer service people. It really isn’t available for mobile phones.

Unbelievable. On the other hand, maybe not so unbelievable. MTN has a history of throwing expensive pricing at the Nigerian customer base and seeing which would stick. For instance, in the early days, they tried to make us pay for voicemail, but the old Econet forced them to drop that by offering the service free of charge. If memory serves me well, they also tried to make us pay for checking our balances and again had to drop that idea. That was then, this is now and the pattern doesn’t seem to have changed. Now let’s be clear and let’s be fair. The other GSM service providers, Glo and Zain, also charge 15k per kilobyte for incidental usage. Etisalat do have a data deal, but for some mysterious reason are silent on usage pricing on their website. However Glo and Zain offer monthly package deals like MTN and the packages they do offer however provide the kind of flexibility that MTN doesn’t offer and are available on phones – not just modems and data cards. Zain for instance offer the following package options:

They also recently provided an “all you can eat” package for N15,000.00 monthly. Though there is some negative discussion ongoing about this over at Mobility Nigeria. Glo offer the following:

I am not suggesting that Glo or Zain’s packages are perfectly good and that everyone should flock to them. I point them out instead to show they provide much more flexibility and more options for people to work with than MTN does. I have seriously considered one of the smaller Zain packages as a mobile complement to my home broadband service. The reasons I haven’t moved from MTN are two-fold. The room I work in our office building is such that the only service provider whose signals are strong enough for me to receive or make the occasional phone call is MTN. Secondly, I have used this number for years and this is what my contacts know me on. I’m not ready yet for the hassle of changing numbers and having to inform everyone of the change. I also am not a two phone person. Now if only the NCC would implement number portability…

I am not attempting to tell MTN how to run their business, merely advocating for better service offerings. I am also focused on them because they are my primary provider and are uniquely placed to have the largest impact on the industry if they so desired. MTN have shown themselves to be creative or at least on the leading edge of technology in what they can bring to the table with services like the 3.5G network, Google SMS, C-Track, DSTV mobile, OneWorld, and others. They have been the longest lived, most successful GSM provider in Nigeria thus far. They have great breadth, but are, in this writer’s opinion, lacking in depth. It would only take a nimble upstart to replace them at the top of the hill. Econet could have, but, well we know what happened to them (sort of). Now if MTN only matched the Zain offerings number for number, their superior network coverage would make it more attractive to users. If they just moved the decimal point to make it 1.5 kobo per kilobyte, we are still talking about nearly 50,000 naira – still bizarre, but not mind-bogglingly so. They could even go the route of agile non-GSM operator Starcomms with their 100 hour and 250 hour bundle packages. Or even better do something really radical. They might even (gasp) crash the price, do 0.5 kobo per kilobyte, and make everyone else in the industry scramble to adjust. They would still make a fabulous profit.

One last thing. Congratulations to Glo on the arrival of their submarine cable, Glo 1 at Alpha Beach. Now if they would be so kind to run a line to my house. It isn’t too far away.

Dej.