The last one there is a rotten egg!

Its been a few weeks since the introduction of the new Umeme Yaka Payment system. Two or three technicians stuck a gadget on one of the poles in the garden and replaced the old meter marking a new phase in the lives of not just myself but many other users. 

My initial response to this was to wonder how quickly our ingenious residents would adapt to the new system which is much harder to infiltrate...for lack of a better word. 

We were handed a card and a code with a substantial set of figures which would serve as a unique identifier. 

Now like we often do with our moving phones, we would need only top up and then manage the use of our power.

Which brings me to another slightly different conversation. Payment for utilities is improving by the day and there is no shortage of innovators to help simplify the process by which we do. There is talk to introduce a similar process for water that howls also handle flow and regulation. 

There has been a lot of talk about the Internet as a utility. Are we about to see similar systems that arrive right at the door of citizens through which many of us will be paying as we do for water to access out internet service? Maybe as new forms of access are developed we might find a time when our Internet lines run along side out power lines or that we receive our wireless using light (li-fi). My point is that our telecoms ought to be innovating. Maybe someone should take advantage of the existing phone line infrastructure to put a system of this type in place. 

Let us watch and see who makes it to the proverbial finish line. 

Weddings and Marriages

Received an interesting SMS from Warid/Airtel that revealed to me that the two were well over the pomp and circumstance of the wedding and were now officially into the marriage.

The SMS described a new method of payment for the internet service that was initially used for Warid Telcom. Well now after some work, and the official merger the older Warid model can now work in the Airtel environment. Much like the user who get older scratch cards can use them with both Warid and Airtel lines!

You ask why this is so significant?

Well because mergers are taking place on a technical level which in my view is much harder. A little like couples who begin to navigate around each other and the little idiosyncrasies that exist behavior. The lonely techie who sits in the office working on complex code to enable devices to talk to servers across multiple platforms and who builds databases to manage these interactions while trying to maintain security can be a daunting task.

Merge all these technologies to work seamlessly together with limited error and you will not be surprised why he asks for close to six figures and chooses to grow a beard and arrive in sandals!

Thumbs up if you ask me!