19th annual research workshop mobile phones and micro and small enterprises (mse) performance and transformation in dodoma, tanzania by Dr. V. Venkatakrishnan

Recommendations

Though mobile phones have been widely used in Tanzania, there is an indication that the mobile phone sector has stagnated since 2011. Drastic efforts are needed from the leading service providers and the regulators to furthering the achievements of mobile phones growth and to overcome the stagnation. Reducing the tariff for both on-net and off-net calls is essential in this regard. If the tariff for off-net calls is reduced, it will increase the overall customer base for each service provider as they will be accessible to customers of other service providers.

Further, efforts have to be made to popularize Multi-Media Messaging Service (MMS) similar to that of Short Message Service (SMS) among younger generation of Tanzanians. The traffic of SMS is increasing considerably. The handsets being used by many of the MSE owners and employees seem to have limited capability for undertaking some of the business functions. As the MMS has more potential for addressing some of the shortcomings faced MSMEs in terms of mobile phone applications for the business, it is desirable that the service providers make campaigns about its uses. This will also increase the traffic in this segment and consequently make an impact on the revenue of the service providers.
Enabling conditions have been created for the next and higher level of usage of mobile phones. The Teledensity has reached a very high level. Mobile-money transfer services have also reached major business locations of Tanzania. There is a need to upgrade the telecom market moving away from mere voice calls dependence to data transmission based services. This is needed to ensure that there is a greater uptake of smarter applications of mobile phones such as accessing internet, emails and mobile-money transactions. Unless these issues are addressed, the enterprises will use the mobile phones merely to make voice calls and make financial transactions with the suppliers.
Awareness of the uses of the mobile-money transfer services needs to be increased. Further, efforts are needed from the mobile-money transfer service providers to ensure that inter-service provider collaboration is achieved to enlarge the uses of these services for making payments for purchase of goods and services. Though there are efforts in bigger towns like Dar es Salaam to enlist outlets accepting mobile-money transfers, further consolidation is necessary. Moreover, there is a need to reduce the cost of transactions for bulk and bigger mobile-money transactions to ensure that businesses adopt that in a large scale.
The Government of Tanzania, market regulators and other market players need to make concerted efforts to address the issues of poor quality handsets, limited interconnectivity between operators due to higher off-net tariff, lack of stable electricity supply, frequent network problems, lack of knowledge about smart phone applications and consequent low usage of higher level applications. If these are addressed it will be possible for the MSMEs to convert themselves from merely using voice calls and SMS to data transmitters and users leading to transformation of the sector.

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1 Senior Lecturer, Department of Development Studies, University of Dodoma, Dodoma, Tanzania; Email: [e-mail] and Mobile Phone: [phone]