To ease access to ‘cash power’, SMS media is set to reduce the cost of sending on a short message when buying electricity. The current charge is about Rwf 65 which the company is planning to reduce to Rwf 20.

According to Jeff Gasana, the General Manager of ‘SMS Media’, a service provider of Short Message Service (SMS) content and wireless applications, negotiations have been finalized with the service provider network (MTN Rwanda) to have the new rates effective next month.

"This will help to increase the number of people using the service around the country.

It is a simple yet effective mechanism to purchase electricity. Consumers are able to use their cell phones to purchase electricity every day of the week any where,” he said.

He also indicated that the MTN network coverage is available around the country at 95 percent.

However Rwandatel is also yet to begin providing the service to its clients.

" Our problem at the beginning was capacity but now Electrogaz is currently installing new meters in rural areas .Reducing the price will also encourage people in rural areas to use the service because it is convenient and affordable,”

Electrogaz is replacing the conventional billing system by pre-payment system mainly to reduce losses incurred in unpaid bills, fraud and the difficulty of collections in rural areas.

The country’s sole utility house has a rural electrification plan that been set for a five year period with the aim of increasing electrification rate from the current rate of 6 percent to 16 percent by 2013.

Gasana also mentioned that they are targeting more dealers based in rural areas to sell the electricity.

The service provider currently has at least 90 street vendors and 200 dealers in different locations around the country using SMS vend, power cards or web vend to sell electricity.

"It is much easier for people upcountry to become dealers using their phones as access to Internet in rural areas is still limited,” he explained.

He pointed out that unlike dealers in urban areas who have easy access to the internet enabling them to sell electricity using the web (web-dealers), people in rural areas can easily sell using the SMS service and Scratch Cards.

While SMS Media is currently selling 40 percent of total Electrogaz prepaid electricity, 65 percent of prepaid electricity in the country is sold on the web.

"This will also reduce the long queues when buying electricity because a good percentage of our population has access to mobile phones,” Gasana said.

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