Big Vodacom Please Call Me lie – MyBroadband

Nkosana Makate did not invent Please Call Me. However, this incorrect statement — that he is the Please Call Me inventor — has been repeated so often that most media outlets and commentators quote it as fact.

The true inventor of Please Call Me is legal expert Ari Kahn, who invented and patented Please Call Me on behalf of MTN.

To understand the debacle around Please Call Me, one has to go back to 21 November 2000 when Makate shared his Buzz idea with Vodacom.

The idea was for Vodacom subscribers who have run out of airtime to Buzz another number and receive a return call.

Makate said people without airtime “should be able to at least dial, and the receiving phone should ring and register a missed call”.

“The other caller will, in turn, notice a missed call and call back the original caller who is without airtime,” his original memo stated.

Vodacom’s product development team used Makate’s idea to develop what would become known as Please Call Me.

On 19 December 2000, former Vodacom manager Lazarus Muchenje informed Makate that Vodacom would launch a product similar to his Buzzer idea.

It should be noted that Please Call Me differed significantly from Makate’s initial idea and that he was not involved in the development.

Makate discussed compensation for his idea with Vodacom’s former product development manager, Philip Geissler.

Geissler reminded Makate that staff don’t usually get extra rewards for their work but promised to speak to former Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig on his behalf.

Makate did not receive a reward for his idea, so he decided to act. He sent letters of demand in 2007 and launched legal action against Vodacom in 2008.

This resulted in a protracted legal battle between Makate and Vodacom regarding compensation for his idea.

The High Court and SCA ruled in favour of Vodacom before the Constitutional Court ruled in 2016 that Makate was owed compensation.

The apex court ordered Vodacom and Makate to negotiate compensation in good faith. Makate asked for R20 billion, which Vodacom countered with R10 million.

Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub ultimately offered Makate R47 million for his idea, which he rejected.

Makate then launched legal action in the High Court, arguing that Joosub had calculated the compensation incorrectly.

This time, the High Court found in favour of Makate and Vodacom took it on appeal.

In February 2024, The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruled Vodacom must pay Makate a share of the revenue generated by its Please Call Me product.

Using a previous High Court ruling as the basis, the Supreme Court essentially ordered Vodacom to pay Makate between R29 billion and R63 billion.

To put this in perspective, Vodacom has an Ideation programme to encourage employees to come up with ideas — exactly what Makata produced.

The highest payment an employee can receive for an idea is R1 million. However, the company has never paid more than R500,000 for an idea.

Vodacom has applied to the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal the Supreme Court of Appeal ruling.

True inventor of Please Call Me

Ari Kahn, the true inventor of Please Call Me, said Makate is not the originator of the service and deserves no more than one cent.

Kahn highlighted that Makate’s Buzz idea, allowing a user without airtime to dial a phone number and give a missed call, was not technically possible.

He explained that a mobile call could only mature to a ringing state if the user had credit on their account.

Consequently, the proposal did not progress beyond an idea. Even skilled engineers at Vodacom could not reduce it to practice.

This is why there is a clear distinction between ideas and inventions. Inventions are required by law to be reduced to practice.

Kahn said Makate’s proposal was completely different from the Please Call Me service which Vodacom implemented.

“It did not even remotely resemble the Please Call Me messaging system which Vodacom launched,” said Kahn.

There is also another, even more powerful proof that Makate should not be credited as the Please Call Me inventor.

On 15 November 2000, a week before Makate proposed Buzz, Kahn conceived the Please Call Me idea.

Kahn briefed patent attorneys on 16 November to prepare a patent application for filing for the Please Call Me service.

After MTN successfully filed for IP protection on 22 January 2001, it launched its “Call Me” service on 23 January 2001.

Seven weeks later, on 15 March 2001, Vodacom launched its competing service. It was a carbon copy of the MTN service and was even identically named “Call Me”.

MTN notified Vodacom that it was infringing on their patent. Despite continuing to offer the service, Vodacom changed the name to “Please Call Me”.

The well-documented timeline, which includes IP and patent filings, established prior art as Vodacom had yet to publicly disclose and launch its service.

In 2019, Vodacom admitted that Please Call Me was invented and subsequently patented by MTN before Makate came up with the idea.