Cellfind takes LBS to Africa

Cellfind, a subsidiary of Blue Label Telecoms, plans to establish itself as the continent’s location-based services (LBS) aggregator of choice by providing robust, flexible and affordable solutions to the market.

The South African company will provide its proven Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) LBS technology to African network operators and service providers who want to deploy location services to promote customer loyalty and drive revenue growth.

Cellfind will help such business partners to deploy innovative consumer services such as friend and family finders, mobile yellow pages, information finders, tragic alerts and mobile panic buttons as well as business applications such as asset tracking and targeted location-based mobile advertising.

Says Quentin Joubert, Product Manager at Cellfind: ‚”With more than a decade of experience in the LBS space and ownership of our technology, we are perfectly positioned to help operators in other African countries roll out LBS solutions which enhance average revenue per user (ARPU) and promotes subscriber loyalty. Our platform has proven its scalability, accuracy and reliability in South Africa, handling 1200 location transactions per second per system, offering reliable location data and delivering uptime in the region of 99.999%. It offers a quick entrance into the LBS space for operators who don’t want to spend time and money building their own back-end solution from scratch.‚”

Cellfind offer its solution through four major hubs spread across Africa, and works with operators to design, customise, integrate and support LBS services which enhances customer loyalty and create new revenue streams. Its capabilities encompass back-end infrastructure, LBS applications, and, through a partnership with MapIT, mapping services.

Says Joubert: ‚”Our goal is to provide African operators with everything they need to accelerate deployment of LBS so that they receive a rapid return on investment. Since many of them do not have the capex to invest in deploying their own solutions, we offer them the choice of deploying our technology in their networks or using a solution that is hosted in our data centres. Importantly, our technology is designed to span basic GSM technologies such as USSD and SMS as well as the latest GPS-enabled smartphones. We can help operators serve the market from the most basic handsets, but we also offer an app for the smartphone segment. Our technology offers a rich experience that includes mapping, turn-by-turn navigation, geocoding, reverse geocoding and content, whatever handset the end-user carries.‚”

Joubert notes that LBS offers operators a way to drive revenues from the costs of the interception solutions they are required to put in place by law in most countries. It allows to offset constant falls in ARPU as voice revenue saturates and MNO’s are searching for new revenue streams.

Says Joubert: ‚”LBS is a hot growth area around the world and its gaining traction in Africa too. We believe that consumer demand for safety solutions and innovative business solutions will create a stream of opportunities for operators in the LBS space in the years to come.‚”

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