“The service is in use by Safaricom employees on pilot basis”
It will soon be easy for mobile phone users to recover their contacts should they lose their handsets. To make this a reality, Safaricom will introduce a new service, known as ‘Okoa Sim’ designed to ease the pain of losing contacts when handsets are lost or stolen by offering backup and recovery of information for subscribers. The project will use cloud computing to store all information on a subscriber’s Sim card, which will promptly be recovered once a replacement sim is activated.
Okoa Sim, which means ‘save your Sim card’, is a mobile application that will be supported on cloud platforms and made compatible with most phones. The service is in use by Safaricom employees on pilot basis, but will be introduced into the market next month. The names and contacts on the sim are hosted on computers data centres or servers that can be located anywhere. It is called cloud saving because they will not be saved on the physical gadget. The service will be free to Safaricom subscribers, according to a source. Speaking during the launch of the firm’s corporate social responsibility last week, Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore confirmed that the company was resolving the loss of its market share through measures that will target the untapped market while consolidating its existing consumers. “We may not entirely change how we are doing business because of the Communications Commission of Kenya latest data because I believe it is satisfactory. We will venture into other aspects that will bring new confidence to our clients,” he said.The move is set to ease the inconveniences caused when subscribers displace or lose their Sim cards and have to restart the search for contacts. Safaricom introduced Safaricom Cloud in 2009, which would enable business companies run comprehensive IT services with reduced capital expenditure and safe methods of data storage.
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