{"id":605,"date":"2012-03-25T16:38:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T13:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/?p=605"},"modified":"2016-01-19T14:56:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T11:56:41","slug":"sms-application-in-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/sms-application-in-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"SMS application for businesses in Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article attempts to inform you on the innovative use of SMS in Kenya. SMS messaging has been around since early 90&#8217;s and over 200,000 <a title=\"Wikipedia article on SMS\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SMS\"> SMS are send per second.<\/a> Innovative SMS use permeate all the industries in Kenya from opinion polling, banking, Insurance, schools and the media industry. The most applauded being MPESA cash transfer service provided by Safaricom.<!--more-->Innovative uses of texting in Kenya:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Premier Rate SMS services like SMS short code and bulk SMS<\/li>\n<li>Web2sms by Airtel<\/li>\n<li>Gmail SMS \u2013powered by Safaricom and Google<\/li>\n<li>Email to Short Message Service<\/li>\n<li>SMS applications and security<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Premier Rate SMS services.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Short code services enable one to send an SMS to a designated number (short code) and in response you get information. For of Short code SMS application in Kenya include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To find out KCSE results for a candidate in last year\u2019s exam, you would send her index number to short code <strong>5052.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>You want contacts of a particular company? No problem simply text the business name to short code <strong>5991 <\/strong>and Kenya Postel Directories Ltd will reply with the telephone contacts and physical address of that business or company.<\/li>\n<li>To get the status of your NHIF account, type the letters \u201cID\u201d, a space, then your<br \/>\nID number e.g ID 12345678 and send to <strong>6443<\/strong>. You will get a response with the last month you paid for NHIF and the name of your employer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometimes a short code is restricted to a particular mobile network; in such a case the service will specify the short code for each mobile network.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bulk SMS<\/strong> is a service provided by Premier Rate Service Provider\u2019s that enables you to send SMS to many people at once.<\/p>\n<p>To start using SMS text messaging in your business like short code or bulk SMS contact a Premier Rate Service Provider for a quotation.<\/p>\n<p>For a list of <a title=\"Airtel Kenya Premium Rate Service Providers\" href=\"http:\/\/www.africa.airtel.com\/wps\/wcm\/connect\/africaairtel\/Kenya\/Home\/Extras\/Premium_Rate_Services\">Airtel Kenya Premier Rate Service Providers<\/a>,and a list of <a title=\"Safaricom Premium Rate Service Provider \" href=\"http:\/\/www.safaricom.co.ke\/\"> Safaricom Premier Rate Service Providers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do short codes make money?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Short code SMS provide information at a premium rate \u2013 prices above the normal SMS rate. The revenue is shared among the short code provider &#8211; Premium Rate Service (PRS) Provider &#8211; the network company and the content provider.<\/p>\n<p>You can have a dedicated short code or a shared short code. A shared short code is where other companies can sign up and use the same code . What then differentiates your offer is the SMS keyword your users will use. A shared short code will be cheaper than a dedicated short code.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sending SMS from Gmail \u2013powered by Safaricom and Google<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><em>This Google service was discontinued. Updated on 19th Jan 2016<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><del>Safaricom in partnership with Google allow you to send free SMS from your Gmail account to a Safaricom line.<\/del><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><del>You are provided with 50 free SMS credit.<\/del><\/li>\n<li><del>Every time you send a message, your credit decreases by one.<\/del><\/li>\n<li><del>Every time you receive an SMS message in Chat (for example when a phone user replies to one of your messages) your credit increases by five, up to a maximum of 50.<\/del><\/li>\n<li><del>If your SMS credit goes down to zero at any point, it will increase back up to one 24 hours later<\/del><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><del>Read more about this <a title=\"Gmail SMS chat\" href=\"http:\/\/support.google.com\/chat\/\/bin\/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=140366&amp;rd=1\">Gmail SMS service at Google<\/a><\/del><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article attempts to inform you on the innovative use of SMS in Kenya. SMS messaging has been around since&hellip;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[70,69,68,67],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kenya-internet","tag-mpesa","tag-premium-sms","tag-short-codes","tag-sms"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawlast.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}