Nigeria’s Tizeti has unveiled an unlimited voice service app. The differentiator ahead of WhatsApp which offers the same service is this: “Unlike WhatsApp, WifiCall subscribers can call any phone number in the world, using their data package”. These companies are simply bringing my prediction that immersive connectivity is coming very fast in Africa well on track: yes 2022.

Nigerian ISP leader Tizeti has launched an unlimited voice service app for Android and iOS mobile devices – WifiCall.ng. Targeted at both individuals and businesses, users will be able to make and receive crystal clear, unlimited voice calls to anywhere in the world via IP phones or web portal. The new product from Tizeti will be rolled out for Nigerian mobile phone numbers initially and subscribers  with a +234 line will be able to use the service from anywhere in the world.

Built by the Tizeti team to tackle the issue of expensive phone calls on the continent, WifiCall is a first for not only the Nigerian ISP space but the African ISP space, providing users with a versatile, user-friendly interface, giving them access to a modern version of the “yellow pages”. Implementation of the WifiCall platform is expected to reduce calling costs for businesses by 30-50%, with monthly subscriptions starting from N6,000 [$16.67] a month.

Unlike WhatsApp, WifiCall subscribers can call any phone number in the world, using their data package. For businesses WifiCall allows ease of a variety of client services and internal communications.

Key product features for the WiFiCall app include

• Customisable dashboard

• Calling statistics

• Personalised digital receptionist messages for multi-line requirements whereby companies can create and manage queues

• One click phone number search + search engine of business phone numbers

• Subscribers can select their own number

• Multi-user sub-account management with ability to top up online and allocate call credits to users.

• Management of users within a calling space

The service comes with a number of additional innovative features, such as allowing mobile users to place calls directly from Twitter by tweeting phone numbers to @wificallng while on the social network, a feature developed with SMEs in mind, so they can provide seamless customer service. Looking to make sure tech platforms can build services around the WifiCall product, developers will have access to the API suite within the platform, to tailor product-based solutions for businesses. This extends past the wide variety of features already on offer across web and mobile including the ability to top-up credit online, allocate call credit to multiple users as well as create digital receptionists and queues.

From press statement

Our partners and major distributors are now having access to Zenvus Loci. Reach out to our team if your partnership has been completed. Loci is a disposable or reusable package GPS that you can put in a briefcase, cargo, personnel, etc and monitor in real time its location. We see opportunities in tracking the specific cargoes (not just the trucks), ecommerce shipments, security guards, equipment on transit, law enforcement (police, army, etc), human (child, oil workers, etc), luggage (individuals shipping via buses, personal air travel luggage, etc), vehicles (no installation), etc. It is cheaper than anything in the market and it is rechargeable with USB.

The best time to prepare for a new job is when you are not looking for a job! Unless you are industry aware in your sector, most hiring managers will give up after 60 seconds during interviews. Looking for tech /strategy job? Read my blog Tekedia.com, Techcrunch, etc. Business job? Businessday, Bloomberg, Fortune, etc. Other areas? Find great platforms that deepen your insights and perspectives.

Do less Facebook cat videos and gossips! Do not think you can use 24 hours to prepare for interviews in a serious companies.

I read The Economist, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Forbes (US) with subscriptions paid for years ahead. To work with the top leaders of the world, you must be informed to be exciting to occupy a section of the atoms around them. Because you have no money, the only thing you can command they cannot quickly ramp up is deep personal knowledge base.

The best entertainment to rich people is telling them how to make more money! Unless you have core, they will discover when you are pretending you can help them. Deepen your insights and perspectives through focused and sustained accumulation of knowledge.

This is simply unbelievable: Hertz paid Accenture $32 million for web design, and bad things then happened. Yes, the rental car company is claiming that after paying Accenture $32 million to make a website that the consulting firm could not deliver the product. Hertz now wants its money back. It reads like fiction for Accenture to be accused of such! I mean to be sued for the inability to make a decent website?

Car rental giant Hertz is suing over a website redesign from hell.

The US corporation hired monster management consultancy firm Accenture in August 2016 to completely revamp its online presence. The new site was due to go live in December 2017. But a failure to get on top of things led to a delay to January 2018, and then a second delay to April 2018 which was then also missed, we’re told.

As Hertz endured the delays, it found itself immersed in a nightmare: a product and design that apparently didn’t do half of what was specified and still wasn’t finished. “By that point, Hertz no longer had any confidence that Accenture was capable of completing the project, and Hertz terminated Accenture,” the car rental company complained in a lawsuit [PDF] lodged against Accenture in New York this month.

Hertz is suing for the $32m it paid Accenture in fees to get to that aborted stage, and it wants more millions to cover the cost of fixing the mess. “Accenture never delivered a functional website or mobile app,” Hertz claimed.

Accenture told El Reg on Tuesday this week it believes Hertz’s lawsuit is “without merit.”

Among the most mind-boggling allegations in Hertz’s filed complaint is that Accenture didn’t incorporate a responsive design, in which webpages automatically resize to accommodate the visitor’s screen size whether they are using a phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop.

That has been standard website practice for years and was even included in the contract that was signed, but the boffins at Accenture decided that only desktop and mobile versions were needed, according to Hertz. When the rental giant’s execs asked where the tablet version was, Accenture “demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fees to deliver the promised medium-sized layout.”

It actually gets worse.

But this gives us a window into what it costs to have those great websites we like to shop, and patronize, in top leading global companies. Your $500 budget in Lagos will not cut it!