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Technology Development

Implementation Planning

System Q & A

What cellphone carrier companies exist in Kenya?

  • Safaricom
  • Zain Kenya
  • Orange Kenya
  •  Econet Wireless 

What messaging features do they provide? At what cost?

All of the carriers in Kenya current offer standard text message services. It does not cost anything to receive a text message. Prices for sending each text message range from 5 KSH to 10 KSH.

Can WishVast surf on the available technologies? (enabling technologies)

WishVast is designed to work on any Short Message Service (SMS) or text message infrastructure. All four major cellphone companies in Kenya offer these services. It is also possible to use SMS gateways on centralized architecture deployments that are located in urban areas with access to the internet.

SMS traffic issues / reliability issues

SMS message speeds depend on the cellphone technology infrastructure.

    • GSM 6-10/minute
    • GPRS 30/minute
    • CDMA software 500/minute (for purchase)

GSM is the dominant global technology at 74% market and it offers roaming in Kenya. The WishVast NMS was built to be compatible with only GSM.


How will delays affect the WishVast network

        Delays will be beyond the control of the WishVast network operator.        

Setup and maintenance educational resources

}Recurring
}SMS Plan $0.07 per message
}Non-Recurring
}WishVast NMS
}Laptop $300-$600
}Tether $20
}Cell-Phone $100-200
}TOTAL SYSTEM COST = $420 - $820

Scalability of user base on decentralized system


Decentralized systems are highly scalable, and are limited only by the number of text messages that can be sent and recieved per unit of time.

Maintenance challenges

We have not yet observed the system running for a long, extended period of time, this should provide no problems because we used a garbage collected language (Java) but this is a concern for all systems that must be long    running.