Unveiling the service in Dar es Salaam, the Head of Branding
and Communication for Vodacom Tanzania, Mr Kelvin Twissa, said the launch of
this service brings together their mobile money transfer system with the
low-cost airline.
This is yet another indication that Telecom firms are
positioning themselves for the next major source of revenue, which is the use
of mobile services as a medium to transfer money.
The FastJet Commercial
Manager for Tanzania, Mr Jean Uku, said that by joining forces with Vodacom,
they were bringing together two companies to offer an easy, and convenient way
to buy FastJet tickets that will make air travel even more accessible for the
tens of thousands of Tanzanians that FastJet has already brought to the skies.
She said that since its launch at the end of November 2012,
FastJet has flown well over 30,000 passengers between Dar es Salaam and its two
current destinations of Kilimanjaro and Mwanza.
According to her, they would be
announcing new routes to international destinations in the coming weeks.
Mr Twissa said Vodacom’s M-Pesa service was launched in 2008
and today has more than 4.5 million active customers with over 1trn/-
transacted through the service every month.
Africa is now the second largest
mobile market in the world, with more than 620 million mobile users.
Over the past 10 years, the number of mobile connections in
Africa has grown an average of 30 per cent per year and was forecast to reach
735 million by the end of 2012, he said.
In such an arrangement, the key
beneficiaries of the service, analysts say, will be travellers who will have
their travel booking tools literally at their fingertips, saving them both time
and money that would have been spent on commuting to buy air tickets.
It was
not clear yesterday as to whether they intend to recruit more airlines into the
service.
Source: The Daily News, www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Orton Kiishweko in Dar es Salaam
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