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• BRCK acquires ISPs EveryLayer and Surf to boost Africa’s public Wi-Fi

  Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor Africa Roundup: Zimbabwe’s net blackout, Partech’s $143M fund, Andela’s $100M raise, Flutterwave’s pivot Partech is doubling the size of its African venture fund to $143 million Kenyan communications hardware company BRCK has acquired the assets of Nairobi based internet provider Surf and its U.S. parent EveryLayer in a purchase deal of an undisclosed amount announced Friday. Based in Nairobi, Surf is a hotspot service provider aimed at offering affordable internet to lower income segments. BRCK is a five year old venture that pairs its rugged WiFi routers to internet service packages designed to bring people online in frontier and emerging markets. With the acquisition, BRCK gains the assets of San Francisco based EveryLayer and its Surf subsidiary, including 1200 hotspots and 200,000 active customers across 22 cities in Kenya, according to BRCK CEO and founder Erik Hersman. EveryLayer CEO Mark Summer confirmed these details with TechCrunch. Backed by $10 million from investors including Steve Case’s <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/revolution" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/revolution&source=gmail&ust=1550264079401000&usg=AFQjCNHxpQzuoH0fPB4lHfAa_bZ07Yiklg">Revolution VC fund, BRCK plans to use its new resources to expand to an undisclosed East African and is eying options abroad. “We’re looking at Indonesia and starting our pilot in Mexico next month,” Hersman told TechCrunch on a call from Kigali. BRCK built its platform around providing internet solutions primarily in Kenya and Rwanda. In 2017, the company rolled out its SupaBRCK product and paired it to its Moja service, which offers free public WiFi—internet, music, and entertainment—subsidized by commercial partners. There’s not a requirement to click on or watch advertisements to gain Moja access, though users can gain faster access if they “interact with one of our business partners…by doing a survey, downloading an app, or watching an ad,” said Hersman. In 2018, BRCK began offering SupaBRCK devices to drivers of Nairobi’s Mutatu buses for Kenyan commuters to access Moja. As of January Moja traffic is racking up 300,000 active uniques and 3.7 million impressions per month, according to Hersman. The BRCK founder has described Africa’s internet challenges—mainly the lowest penetration rates in the world—as shifting toward more of an affordability than availability problem. “The demand on internet in Africa is largely driven by the 10 to 15 percent who can afford it. The real massive opportunity is trying to connect the 70 to 80 percent of the people who can’t. That’s where the internet race really is,” Hersman told TechCrunch in 2017. Speaking on the recent EveryLayer asset acquisition, Hersman explained that improvements over recent years in Africa’s smartphone penetration, internet costs, and broadband capabilities are not necessarily translating to large portions of Africa’s 1.2 billion people. “Even with penetration improving, even with data prices going down, there’s still not a viable way to get internet to huge swaths of people,” he told TechCrunch. “The real numbers are that about 20 percent in every country can now afford to buy data-bundles, but 80 percent can’t.” With the recent asset acquisition BRCK hopes to add its experience in delivering internet solutions on transit networks to Surf’s WiFi and IP capabilities toward new partnerships and service countries. “Surf has a model for fixed WiFi and a team that roll things out in Kenya and new geographies. We can go to big ISPs in other countries and create partnerships…for fixed WiFi followed by transportation connectivity,” said Hersman. BRCK will maintain the Surf name in the short term, “but over the next three to six months it will all be rebranded and the platform will become Moja WiFi,” Hersman said. Surf’s existing employees have been invited to join BRCK. As for Surf’s parent company, EveryLayer, “at this point it will be shutdown. One of the founders Andris Bjornson will join BRCK,” CEO Mark Summer told TechCrunch. In 2018, EveryLayer announced a partnership whereby Surf would also offer Facebook’s Express WiFi hotspots on its network. With the acquisition, that arrangement will continue “only for those existing express WiFi locations” until BRCK transitions “those…nodes to Moja WiFi in the next three to six months, explained BRCK CEO Erik Hersman. “ On data-privacy for BRCK’s Moja users, “BRCK doesn’t capture personally identifying information beyond the MacID of the device connecting…We don’t associate users browsing data with individual users and there are no logins,” Hersman told TechCrunch. ... Read More

• Samsung’s new tablet sports Bixby 2.0

  Bixby’s been on a bunch of phones and several appliances. Until now, however, Samsung’s smart assistant has been largely MIA on the company’s tablets. Of course, I’ve never pretended to have the faintest idea of the company’s strategy here. Anyway, just ahead of MWC and its own Unpacked (S10) event, the company just dropped a bunch of info about the Tab S5e, its first slate to sport Bixby 2.0. A key part of the feature’s arrival is Samsung’s plan to make its mobile products a centerpiece of its smart home play. As the company notes, “Tab S5e offers a smarter and more convenient way to interact with your device, and serves as an ideal hub to control your connected home devices. Switch on your TV and your lights at the same time with Quick Command, which allows you to customize several actions under one command—making voice control of your home environment even quicker, simpler and more tailored to you.” There are, as noted, a number of appliances that support Bixby, though it’s largely limited to Samsung’s own. That’s a pretty severe limitation at the moment, when compared to the likes of Alexa, Siri and Google Home, of course. The new tablet also features a bulked-up battery rated at 14.5 hours, a 10.5-inch sAMOLED display and up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It will be available in Q2, starting at $400. ... Read More

• Dubai airport forced to halt departures due to drone sightings

  “Unauthorized drone activity” caused the Dubai International Airport to ground all of its outbound flights for over 30 minutes on Friday morning, The New York Times reports. During the shutdown, which lasted from 10:13AM to 10:45AM local time, only inbound flights were able to fly at the third-busiest airport in the world. United Arab Emirates rules expressly forbid flying drones within 5 kilometers of airports. Dubai’s is the latest in a string of airports that have had to halt flights due to drone activity. The most significant disruption occurred in the UK where its second-largest airport, Gatwick, was closed for over a day in the run-up to Christmas after drones were repeatedly sighted flying near its runways. Despite a high-profile... Continue reading… ... Read More

• Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab S5e is its lightest and thinnest tablet ever

  There isn’t a single Android tablet we can currently wholeheartedly recommend, but the new 10.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e looks like it could be a contender — at $399, it’s not only far more affordable than the flagship $649 Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, it’s arguably surpassed it in some ways. For starters, the Tab S5e has the thinnest and lightest metal unibody of any Galaxy Tab, measuring 5.5mm thin and weighing just 400 grams — even compared to the 11-inch iPad Pro at 5.9mm thick and 468 grams, the Tab S5e is both lighter and thinner. The company also claims they’ve maximized space with the Tab S5e’s massive 81.8 percent screen-to-body ratio, which on paper, is an improvement over the Tab S4’s lower 79 percent ratio. It’s also right on... Continue reading… ... Read More




• Major games publishers are feeling the impact of peaking attention

  MiDIA Research's Karol Severin explains why publishers need to stop blaming Fortnite and compete with a wider world of entertainment... Read More

• Cultist Simulator passes 100,000 sales after first year

  Weather Factory says crowdfunded narrative card game is generating enough revenue "to cover our costs, and then some, most months"... Read More