One of the biggest mistakes ”we” (actually a partner made the error) have made is not to look at the future of a market and realize what will become a commodity. SIM cards became a commodity. Recharge cards were commodities from start. The software and voucher server is not.

We did a deal where more of the upside was from selling more SIM Cards and that was rapidly disrupted. The software side of the business and airtime sales was where we should have done a revenue share and not the SIM cards. Funny thing is that we had this model in Colombia.

Because the Colombia operation died early (more for political reasons) we did the wrong model in Africa which still haunts me till today. We have not been able to come back from the mistake. Now the world is going to eSIMs. I am looking at Transsion and phones and wondering.

I love the PalmPay product and all but their biggest strength is the distribution network they have built for phones. Their brands in Africa are almost as strong as telco brands. Why not just go for MVNO? Lebara has had an office in Ghana for years and I don't know what they do.

The telco services business is going to be abstracted to a new layer. Once again, let me use the analogy of my current favorite startup @brassbanking. What they are doing now for banking is what will eventually happen to telco and Transsion is the best player for it in Africa.

eSIMs will change the telco model globally to a more service based model than an infrastructure one. All of those tech companies investing in Jio will become telco service companies with Jio as the backbone. It will happen in Africa too.