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The mobile telecommunications story in Africa and the developing world is a remarkable one. Africa's mobile cellular growth rate has been the highest of any region over the past 5 years, averaging close to 60% year on year. There have been large cellular infrastructure investments, which have enabled millions of people to communicate better. This paper looks at the various technical & operational considerations associated with creating a middleware platform for mobile services that will support different mobile paradigms (voice, text, multimedia, mobile web, applications) using a variety of communications protocols (SMS, USSD, MMS, Bluetooth, WAP data via GPRS/3G/HSDPA). This will enable the reusability of components, ensure scalability, support multiple access devices (from basic phones to more powerful smart phones, including traditional PCs), provide interoperability via different modes of access and …