WhatsApp is eating the telcos’ lunch? Stay hungry

Methinks it won’t be long before telcos pay us to be subscribers, so we can use the other good stuff they have like mobile money and so on. 

In Summary

• The striking thing is that, besides Safaricom’s M-Pesa, mobile phone operators on the continent have done remarkably little innovation.

By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
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So we read that over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Signal are eating the lunch of mobile phone companies in sub-Saharan Africa.

People are yakking less on their mobile phone lines and sending fewer old-fashioned text messages. And rightly so. Why should they burn up precious shillings on the mobile phone line, when they can do so for no additional cost if they have a Wi-Fi connection over WhatsApp or Facetime?

Some African telcos have pushed for OTTs to be banned. Surprisingly, governments have been more enlightened, and said no. Those are the actions of companies that could soon wither or die.

They are not reading the tea leaves accurately, for the times are truly a changing.

Recently I read a remarkable story quoting the CEO and founder of Iceland’s carrier Skúli Mogensen. He is one of those bearded, wonderfully crazy modern-day entrepreneurs. His airline offers tickets for as low as $55 between Europe and the US. In other words, for the price of a sumptuous dinner at one of the top-end hotels in an East African capital, you can buy a trans-Atlantic ride on WOW.

He said in the Business Insider interview that one of these days, airlines will pay people to fly.

This is because, he said, “For years now, airlines have worked to diversify their revenue streams and to reduce their reliance on ticket sales for income. Fees for things such as seat selection, early boarding, and in-flight meals have become the norm. In addition, they have developed lucrative partnerships with hotels, restaurants, rental car agencies, and other travel industry players to ensure their ability to derive revenue from all facets of a passenger’s travel needs.”

Methinks it won’t be long before telcos pay us to be subscribers, so we can use the other good stuff they have like mobile money and so on.

The striking thing is that, besides Safaricom’s M-Pesa, mobile phone operators on the continent have done remarkably little innovation. For too long they relied on things like offering cars, houses, and holiday trips in some form of airtime lottery or the other. But on the motherhood stuff, they have done little.

If they were not tight-fisted, they would be putting some money in the pockets of the growing army of young African innovators to help them create their answer to Facebook and WhatsApp.

Even if somehow they could get governments to ban OTT services, they would still lose. This is because the success of OTTs and their social media kin actually has little to do with technology.

They are successful because they have mobilised the most powerful – and even destructive forces and needs – vanity, pride, anger, and ego.

A large segment of OTTs are massive digital vanity and ego parades, with people putting their best taken or Photoshopped photographs, groomed pets, cute babies, expensive cars, fancy homes forward.

That stuff is like the proverbial genie. If it gets out, you can’t put it back.

A good friend likes to say that many businesses make the mistake of wanting to own the theatre – the telco equivalent of masts, I guess.

However, people don’t pay to go see the theatre. They pay to watch plays. WhatsApp is the play.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3