CyberschuulNews.com

Editions 141 - 149

 




        CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 149


eNIGERIA RATED HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL AS

NIGERIAN YOUTHS CHALLENGE ECOWAS ON ICT

Nigeria's ICT youth community was represented at the recent eNIGERIA conference by a caucus made up of Nigerian Youth Coalition on ICTs, Intelligence Foundation and Youth Development entrepreneurship foundation, YDEF. The IT Youth Ambassador, Mr. Edward Popoola, led the delegation. The caucus actively participated in the conference, presented a Nigerian Youth Paper on WSIS, provided live Internet coverage of the conference proceedings and issued the Nigerian Youth Declaration on WSIS communiqué. Their paper invited ECOWAS member states to make ICT the driving force in teaching and learning through the revision of existing curricula at the three tiers of the educational system.

Stay tuned www.cyberschhul.com for full report on eNIGERIA 2004 summit [May 24 - 26].
NITEL HIKES PHONE TARIFF

'When a telco is suffocating, it lowers prices. When it is asthmatic, it hikes them' is a common dictum in telecommunications industry parlance. Chances are that NITEL is asthmatic as it went on a rigmarole of surprise price hike last week. It raised its local charge rate by 50% from N4.30 to N6.50.

The significance of its action is in the fact that it is the benchmark for industry tarrification in Nigeria. NITEL's fortune had been on a steady decline in the past ten years as it never recovered to its early 90's best fiscal performances. But matters reached a head when its monopoly was withdrawn legally in 1992, practically in 1998 and radically in 2000 when several PTO's came into the market. Today there are 25 other PTOs and NITEL, which is being restructured under a 'foreign coach' approach preparatory to privatization, appears to need only one solution to make it retain its current market share. Miracle.

The guy who announced the apparent panic measures said the company's fortunes are very promising.

. MTN BOWS TO REGULATION AS NCC WINS TARIFF WAR

The court case which GSM giant MTN Nigeria instituted against Nigeria's phone Regulator, NCC, has ended, at this stage, in favour of the latter. Relying on its new powers under the telecommunications Act 2003, the pro-consumer regulator had, late 2003, imposed N11.52 sealing down from N18.00 for interconnect traffic terminating across gsm networks and two mobile service providers one after the order headed for the courts. Now the court has compelled MTN to comply.

Analysts believe the judgment is a vindication of a responsive regulator which has demonstrated very fine credentials of piloting telecommunications business in what many regard as a global-best-practice manner.

Unlike in military years when decisions usually took immediate effect, sometime retroactive, NCC, star of the current regime, has always given good notice for its rulings to take effect and its conduct has been a case study in good industry regulation under a democracy and the rule of

 DIVORCE:

ECONET-VODACOM-VODAGO-VEENETWORK-VMOBILE................

The recent patched relationship between South African mobile giant Vodacom and Econet Wireless Nigeria appears to have collapsed irretrievably. Vodacon which has been finding the Nigerian juicy market too tempting to ignore must have realized lately that it has no temperament for corrupt markets. But dogs cannot ignore bones.

It is testing times for Nigerian officials in view of a foreseeable distabilisation in the industry as the custodian of 30% of the mobile market may be flying back into turbulent weat

 SPECIAL REPORT

SPAM CREATES FEVER ON THE INTERNET

A US based filtering firm MessageLabs reported a few days ago that Spam now makes up 70% of all e-mails worldwide, and the figure is growing,. The firm also said the U.S. anti-spam law that took effect this year actually has had the opposite effect of what was intended because it has legitimized some forms of spam and allowed aggressive marketers to adapt rather than to shut down.

Titi Omo-Ettu a Lagos based telecommunications consultant and trainer says Spam mails have assumed the proportion of HIV on the net. 'Its crazy these days especially if you use the net frequently. Four years ago I used to receive an average of 80 mails per day 60 of which were useful to me. Today I get over 200 and only 20 are useful. Many local contacts may not have access to the web again just as those who use free web based addresses have been tortured to submission by spam mails. 12,000 persons are receiving our cyberschuulnews and almost 7000 of them are the yahoos who, boy, bear the brunt. It s bad, my brother..’

ESSAY

Issues in Youth Empowerment

by

Edward Popoola

Nigeria IT Youth Ambassador

One of the definitions given empowerment in the Oxford English Dictionary is "to give individuals control over their own lives or the situation they are in". In this piece we will look at the present situation of the Nigerian Youth and areas in which they are being empowered or could be empowered.

At the just concluded eNigeria 2004 ICT conference, a man in his forties walked up to the youth stand. Like we did for every other person visiting the booth, we gave him an idea of what the youth caucus was at the conference to do, that is, to present the Nigerian Youth Declaration on the WSIS. He listened to what we had to say, he waited patiently for us to finish and there he went, into what I felt has been bothering his mind as someone who loves his country.

Mr Haruna [not original name] raised the issue of empowering our youths by buying motorcycles[okada] for them. He maintained that in the 21st century this is a most unfair treatment meted out to the youths of this generation. His argument was that, for how long is a young man of 25 going to ride Okada. He pointed out the various things he will have to contend with, his family, his siblings, his house rent among others. At the end he made a conclusion that these youths are those who will ride okada by the day and carry guns at night, to make both ends meet.

I couldn't help but agree with Mr. Haruna. Not because he eloquently passed across his message, nor because he appealed to my emotions but because, he once again reminded me of the fact that we as the youth caucus not only represent the interest of the "literate" youths but also the underprivileged youths.

One thing that I however pointed out to Mr Haruna was the education gap between the literate and the illiterate. For those youths who have had little or no formal education, I will say putting them on an Okada is a short term solution to the problem of unemployment and a short term form of empowerment. This is because in an information society, knowledge is the driving force, and a minimum level of education is required. Otherwise vocational training seems to be a very important area that can benefit these set of youths.

For the literate ones, I think it is most debasing and also an insult on our educational system. For a University graduate or a secondary school leaver, the last option is to settle for an Okada. These are young people who have spent the early part of their lives learning in the four walls of the classroom. A passion has been started in them and it is most unfortunate that we kill this passion by throwing them into the reality of poverty, forcing them to do things they wouldn't have settled for if given other worthy options.

ICT is another worthy option. The World is changing and economies are changing from being concrete resource dependent to knowledge dependent. Nigeria has a population of over 125 million with the youth constituting the major workforce. We can use our population advantage to change our economy. India is doing that today as it is the largest exporter of software personals.

Nigeria is a country that has educated youths littering the whole place, these young people can be trained for the new knowledge economy. They can be empowered with the tool of Information and Communications Technology.

Today, access to the tools of Information Technology is something of concern, however access becomes useless if the people that have access do not have the know how to use and maintain the access. This might then water down the efforts of those clamouring for access to the ICT tools.

The Government, private sector and the civil society should work together to get training and resource centres in different parts of the country. In places where these centres are present there should be a radical awareness program as to their availability. One of such is the Lagos Digital Village that was just commissioned. Parties involved in the project are the Lagos Sate Government, Junior Achievement Nigeria and Microsoft.

And from all indications, over the years the private sector and the civil society have shown interest in sustainable development, their interest do not however see the light of the day when the government shows lackadaisical attitude.

This then is a clarion call to the people in government that the effect of the things we do right or fail to do today will become our neighbours tomorrow.

Edward Popoola can be reached on me@edwardpopoola.com

THE RIGHT TO TALK BACK

NBC CLARIFIES BAN, BAN BAN STORY

Going through CYBERSCHUULNEWS 300404-144, I was hit by the second paragraph of item iii in NEWSreview as it concerns the NBC. I then thought it necessary to correct the misinformation therein. I subscribe to the ideals of the CYBERSCHUULNEWS and quite appreciate the effort at bridging the gap in digital information flow. For contribution to remain relevant I would not want it to be a channel of misinformation.

The National Broadcasting Commission has neither banned the broadcast of foreign news nor used the word ban in the directive given to the broadcast stations in Nigeria 0n March 30, 2004. The Commission only stopped the live relay of foreign news and news programmes by local FM stations. This is in line with the nature of FM licence.

The FM, Frequency Modulation band is utilized for city-based broadcasting. It is usually for light-hearted entertainment, cultural and social taste. The FM stations are essentially meant to cater for urban tastes and considerations because they do not have the reach, which the SW and MW have.

The Short Wave Band -SW is universal and used by all nations for long-range transmissions depending on the power of the transmitter. It can be received without impedance across continents. This is what the BBC, VOA, VON and all others use for long distance broadcast.

The directive on live relay is embedded in the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, the professional Code of the industry in Nigeria. Section 5.1.4 of the Code states;

"A terrestrial station shall not relay foreign news content directly. This does not preclude the universal practice of using excerpts for news whose duration shall not exceed three minutes".

The National Broadcasting Commission Act 38 of 1992 as amended by Act 55 of 1999, section 2(1) (k) supports the Code;

"The Commission shall be responsible for initiating and harmonizing government policies on trans-border direct transmission and reception in Nigeria".

Having established that this action is not illegal as it is backed by law, does it really make sense for any licensed terrestrial station to hook on to "live foreign news broadcast"? Doesn't it amount to a calculated attempt to kill our creativity and freedom of expression?

Another issue of misinformation is that private electronic media owners are made to pay four times what their government owned counterparts pay for operating license.

For license fees, the country categorized is into A, B, and C zones depending the economic viability of the part of the country. At the highest fee of twenty million Naira for five years for private stations which operate in zones, where each zone is made up of five or more states, the fee comes down to about eight hundred thousand Naira per annum. For the government owned stations the fee is five hundred thousand Naira a year per frequency and where a state has more than one frequency, which is usually the case, it pays five hundred times the number of frequencies. So you have some states paying up to twenty-five million Naira in five years. Where as you have some private stations paying as low as ten million Naira in five years.

Whereas the private operator may find a state economically unattractive, the state government has no choice but must as a matter of responsibility provide information and enlightenment machinery to its citizens. Is it not unfolding that some operators are not just ready pay bills, including employee emoluments and taxes.

Bridget Udeorah,
Principal Public Affairs Officer of National Broadcasting Commission, NBC
Editor NBC News


CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 148

  "ENTERPRISE BANKER" LAUNCHED IN LAGOS

A new Banking application codenamed 'Enterprise Banker" has been launched in Lagos by Connect Technologies Ltd. The product is 100% indigenous effort and conforms to best practice principles and international standard and quality.

IT experts who previewed the test runs have classified it as the best banking solution so far engineered by Nigerians for the Nigerian banking environment, especially for community banks.

 DBI TAKES OFF

The Digital Bridge Institute, NCC's answer to the manpower development requirement of the telecommunications industry was commissioned May 20, 2004. The Institute is taking off with courses which include Advanced Intelligent Network, Telecom business trend & analysis, Project management for ICT industry, E-commerce, Portal & Vortal Information Systems etc.

PRIVATISATION

Energy may not be the direct knowledge area of CYBERSCHUULNEWS' alright, but there is a close relationship between good telecommunications/ICT and public electricity industry. Malaysia is reported to have made a success of privatization policy in her electricity supply industry. The following analysis, duly abridged for brevity, is taken from

http://www.metering.com/archive/014/14_1.htm

PRIVATISATION OF THE POWER SECTOR:

A MALAYSIAN SUCCESS STORY

The electricity supply industry in Malaysia was privatised in 1990. There are three main utilities in the country - Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), Sabah Electricity Sdn. Bhd. (SESB) and Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (SESCO). The power demand in 2000 was 10,600 MW, met by a total generation capacity of 13,280 MW. 5,090 MW or 38% is contributed by 13 independent power producers (IPPs).

Malaysia is a developing country with a population of 23 million and a per capita income of about RM13,000 (US$3,400). The economy grew at a rate of about 8% p.a. for the ten years before the 1997/1998 economic slow-down, with electricity demand increasing by over 12% p.a. It is expected to grow at 6% to 8% p.a. over the next ten years.

As a first step in implementing the government's privatisation policy, the National Electricity Board was corporatised in 1990 as Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) and subsequently privatised and floated on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, with the Ministry of Finance holding about 70% of the shares. The Sabah Electricity Board was privatised in 1998 as Sabah Electricity Sdn. Bhd., with TNB as the major shareholder, while the Sarawak State Government divested 50% of its equity in SESCO to the private sector in the late 1990s.

The government has also granted 15 IPP licences, one transmission licence, several distribution licences and a number of merchant co-generation licences since 1990. Besides these, there are about 2,000 self-generation licences issued to industrial and commercial entities that generate electricity for their own use.
Until recently the utilities were vertically integrated entities undertaking generation, transmission, distribution, supply, metering and billing activities. However, TNB has formed two wholly-owned subsidiaries which have taken over the operation of its thermal and hydro stations, selling the energy generated back to TNB through power purchase agreements. TNB has also appointed its subsidiary TNB Metering Service Sdn Bhd to undertake its metering services.

The Malaysian model of privatisation of the power sector, which was designed to meet the country's social and economic objectives, has been able to secure adequate supply of reasonable quality, ensure affordable and stable electricity prices, provide confidence to the investors, meet the funding challenges, promote competition and improve efficiency and productivity

About the Energy Commission of Malaysia

The Energy Commission of Malaysia was established in May 2001 as an independent regulatory body for the electricity and gas sectors. The Commission consists of a chairman, two members representing the government and four other members from the private sector appointed by the Minister of Energy, Communication and Multimedia.
Its main functions are to act as the technical, economic and service regulator of the electricity supply and gas distribution industries, responsible for matters such as ensuring adequate, affordable and quality supply; promoting competition and efficient market conduct; and promoting the interests of consumers. The Commission is also responsible for safety issues, for promoting the use of renewable energy, for promoting R&D and training initiatives, and for advising the Minister on matters concerning national policy objectives for energy supply activities

SOLUDO AS WELCOME ALTERNATIVE

For him who uses his soul to play ludo, he probably needs a soul'ludo to bail him out if he find himself consistently landing in wrong places. The fact that Prof Charles Soludo has been sent to the CBN should give us some hope. We probably need that fellow since he is Sol'udo. The fact that he is an economist makes me feel comfortable with the change of thrust. Those who know the new helmsman describe him as very brilliant. I did a search on him on the Internet and I agree with my informants. If only what is required is such brilliance, we would have been very close to the promised land. I know he is youthful. And when he spoke on tv the other day, I felt like going to read his pet project NEEDS [National Economic Empowerment & Development Strategy] document on the Internet. The fact that he considered putting the document in such public domain talks volume of the kind of guy we are talking about.

On tv he had said the document is a public document and that the concept he was pushing made it critical that the public should contribute to it and be thoroughly involved in its formulation and implementation. He therefore has been taking the crusade round the country until his appointment caught up with him. After listening to him on tele, I hit the web to find the 125-page document. I did not however read the stuff just like that for obvious reasons.

What I did was to search for the words 'telecommunications' 'ICT', 'Information technology' or 'information and communications technology' which are the only things I should imagine would make me gauge the content before reading the entire work if I should at all.

At the end of the search I made 13 hits and I did an analysis of the full text under which each hit appeared. I then felt like reading the entire document and did so. I also went ahead to make a contribution to the work. I sent my contribution to the advertised email address and that was on April 13, 2004. If I had received an acknowledgement I would not have needed to use my contribution here. But since I am not sure the contribution was received, I have taken liberty to use CYBERSCHUULNEWS to also be part of the nice development. We shall use the material in future editions.

There is no doubt that we have used all our soul to play ludo in the management of our economy especially for all the years that we have managed CBN as if the whole of an economy is about banking. Although the ludo game was raised to an art in IBB's time when the game was even the one we used to call the snake-type ludo in my kid days. As a kid I did not like the snake ludo because the board was splashed with various sizes and colours of snakes. It was a game that made us give the name of 'maradona' to the smilling general. One cannot accuse IBB of not using high caliber men to manage public affairs in his time. In fact he did more than any government we have ever had. But that is not the issue here. What we want to say is that we should give NEEDS a chance now that we have realised that our economy should be managed as an economy, not as a bank.

We should congratulate Prof Soludo for this great challenge especially as he is taking over from a highly respected banker and professional. Congratulations also to Chief Sanusi for his sagacity while in office and also to baba for making the difference at this time of NEED for a change.

[Titi Omo-Ettu who contributed the above is a Lagos based telecommunications engineer]

CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 147

   
MTN friendship, or exploitation centers?

asks

Ndubisi Okere

Loss of mobile phones to thieves in Nigeria has been a very common occurrence. What has become very worrisome is how GSM operators, especially MTN, exploit its subscribers who go about the normal business of replacing lost SIM Cards.

As if the unjustifiably high cost of replacing SIM Pack at N2,500 each is not enough, MTN has just made new laws, with possible approval of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, for replacement of lost or stolen SIM Pack at its so called friendship
centres. In the new law, MTN is asking its unfortunate subscribers, who, for no fault of theirs, lost their phones and SIM Cards to do seven highly tasking things to get their numbers back.

To get an affidavit from a Magistrate, State or Federal High Court with the coloured passport of the subscriber attached on the left top corner of the documents duly singed by the court.

Provide an Identity card.

Provide a letter of Recommendation from existing unsuspended MTN Business Time subscriber, with the letter containing the number of the BusinessTime subscriber phone number and Account Number.

Provide a declaration signed and sealed by a Registered Notary Public stating that the customer is a bona fide owner of the line.

Answer a test question.

Pay a N2,500 for the welcome back pack.

Obtain a police report (Implied as most of the other documents cannot be obtained without a police report.)

To think that these Packs were bought without being asked to provide any of the above items, raises the question as to whether MTN intends to encourage the subscriber who lost their SIM Cards to replace them, or discouraging them so that they will prefer to buy
new SIM Cards while their stolen ones are used by the thieves to increase MTN subscriber base.

In actual fact, apart from the inconveniences of running about the business of this replacement, it will cost no less than N3,000 to obtain the aforementioned documents in addition to the N2,500 payable to MTN. To many, it may be easier to obtain a new SIM at less than N9,000. Perhaps, that may be main objective of MTN.

Why does it cost N2,500 to replace a stolen SIM Pack

What is the average cost of manufacturing a SIM Pack?
Ironically, most other GSM operators are beaten by the bug of exploitation to be charging fees as high as N2,500 to replace a SIM Pack. But none has conditions as draconian as MTN. Why would it cost a subscriber a whooping N2,500 to replace a SIM Pack for which he had already paid more than N8,000 when all there is to it is to change the number in the SIM. Is it not only in Nigeria that such exploitation is allowed?

It is worse to think that NCC may have approved this fee for MTN. Or did MTN choose to charge these fees without approvals from the NCC?

Why will an innocent subscriber be subjected to a condition such as obtaining a recommendation from a BusinessTime subscriber, to replace a Pay As You Go, SIM Pack? How does the two types of services relate to each other as to become a condition in replacement of SIM?

What has the courts got to do with loss of SIM Packs to be inundated with requests for affidavits, after one has been obtained from Notary Public? Does this not suggest an indirect support to touting and falsification of records, as even the company cannot cope with the necessary verification of these documents before issuing new packs?

Why would providing a police report and identity card not suffice for replacement of a lost SIM Pack, which simply replaces the same number that the subscriber was using before it was lost without even adding the value in terms of the records which the subscriber had stored in them? Paying money for such a replacement is to exploitative in the least, and the NCC has a lot of explanations to make to the Nigerian public to have allowed MTN to continue to exploit the Nigerian subscribers.

[Ndubuisi Okere lives at 36 Afric Road, Iponri, Lagos]

 GOOD JOB, NCC
Thanks a lot for the information which your Institute supplied to our recent search! One only wishes that this kind of information was publicly available, or at least one would know who to ask. You know, in my interaction with NCC over the past couple of months, I have found them quite open and easy to deal with. If only [Name withheld] can move in the same direction -- at least, let them re-activate their website and put useful information on it!!

Anyway, thanks very much for the information. We really appreciate the quality of the information and your concessionary charge for it.

M. Taiwo, New Zealand

. IMPORTATION OF SCRATCH-CARD, NO, NOT AGAIN!

Hon. Minister of Communications Cornelius Adebayo told the largest gathering of communications stakeholders recently that government would not allow importation of scratch cards beyond January 2005. He was applauded amidst a show of surprise on the faces of several listeners that scratch cards were even being imported at all at the moment.

 NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES FOR BROADBAND SERVICES

AS AfriHUB INTENSIFIES PLANS

SkyTerra Communications Inc recently purchased a majority interest in Virginia based AfriHUB LLC as the latter fine-tunes its planned business project in Africa. AfriHUB [www.afrihub.com ] aims to provide satellite based broadband Internet access, domestic and international calling services to Africa especially in Nigeria where more than 250,000 undergraduates are yearning for internet access.

Nigerian Universities are the major interest areas as this is one of the early projects which Nigerian IT professionals in America are facilitating. The arrowhead of such initiatives, Prof. Manny Aniebonam, told cyberschuulnews that the first two campus facilities are expected to mature around midyear. AfriHub plans to spread 15 such ICT Parks across Nigeria by end of 2005.

CYBERSCHUULJOKE

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. After a few seconds of arguing over which one should go and answer the doorbell, the wife gives up, quickly wraps herself up in a towel, and runs downstairs.

When she opens the door, there stands Yakhoub, the next-door neighbour.

Before she says a word, Yakhoub says, "I'll give you this N100,000.00 to drop that towel that you have on."

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Yakhoub. After a few seconds, Yakhoub hands her the fresh from the mint N100,000.00 and leaves.

Confused, but excited about her good fortune, the woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets back to the bathroom, her husband asks from the shower, "Who was that, Lizzy?"

"It was Yakhoub the next door neighbour," she replies.

"Great!" the husband says, "Did he say anything about the N100,000.00 he owes me?"

BOOK SERIALISATION

. GROUPE SPECIALE MOBILE [GSM] V

PHONES-4-ALL, the most authoritative compendium of Nigeria's telecommunications development, edited by Nigeria's foremost telecom journalist, Mr. Aaron Ukodie is a must-read as it tells the story of Nigeria's development from Magneto to GSM. CYBERSCHUULNEWS started the serialisation of chapter 8 of the 122-page book with the edition 141. In this edition, PHONES-4-ALL talks about Interconnectivity politics and the shift to Frequency Auctioning.

What Is to be licensed

by

Aaron Ukodie

ronukodie@yahoo.com <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />

The Question of Technology to Be Licensed

The appointment of Engr. Ernest Ndukwe the chief executive of General Telecom, GT, and President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, ATCON in the first quarter of 2000 came at the point where of resolution of the crisis generated by the GSM bidding process had ended, with the consequent disbandment of the Ministerial Committee for that purpose. With the exit of Dr Nnama, who was at loggerheads with the Minister of Communications, and cancellation of the first round of the "beauty contest" bidding process, Engr. Ndukwe inherited a blanket cheque. But before he could sit down to business, two new issues emerged. The Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, the national privatization agency, indicated it would, alongside the World Bank, handle the licensing of mobile cellular operators as a result of the bungling of the bidding processes.

In its recommendations, the BPE gave support to a Technology-free licensing for the four mobile cellular operators, thus, elevating the criticisms from certain sections of the industry over the choice of GSM as a national standard. Some of the companies that participated in the first round of auction, like Intercellular which had a CDMA network had publicly indicated that it would not tow the GSM line if it wins the license since it already has a CDMA network. The American embassy, which saw the argument in the prism of the old argument the CDMA, developed by Qualcom, belongs to America while CDMA is a European system, and with Intercellular buying from Motorola in America, supported a technology free license process.

The debate over the technology to chose for nationwide deployment became do topical that the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, on May 11, 2000, organized a debate between the choice of the two contending technologies, CDMA and GSM. Pioneer EVC of NCC spoke in favour of GSM and defended the choice while a veteran telecoms engineer, Engr. A. Bodede who also participated in the study carried out by Telecom Answers for NCC, spoke in favour of CDMA. Engr. Ernest Ndukwe represented NCC at this debate, which took place shortly after his appointment. Engr. Ndukwe's assumption of duty at NCC was followed with the appointment of a ten-man board of Commissioners as prescribed in the NCC decree. The administration of Late Gen Sani Abacha had since 1995, disbanded the pioneer board of the Commission in an unusual action that affected all boards of the government board and parastatals. The new board of NCC became the first \to be so reconstituted. It was another indication that the Federal Government was determined to give the telecommunications industry a priority consideration. Alhaji Ahmed Joda, a former permanent secretary in the 1970's was appointed chairman of the board.

The Auction Endgame for GSM

Back at the NCC, the Ndukwe-led management and the board chaired by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, began to tinker on the best way to proceed in the licensing of the four GSM operators with the patience of the public running out. During this period, many regulators in the developed countries were adopting auction as the process for licensing operators for third generation mobiles systems. Auction has been a method adopted in the USA for licensing most frequency-based services so that the highest bidder wins what is considered publicly owned natural resources.

Pioneer CEO of NCC, Engr. Ogbona Iromantu, had severally rebuffed suggestions for this method during his tenure. He consistently argued that the method may appear transparent but can only be applied to mature telecoms market but would not address some issues like affordability and accessibility which is more crucial to developing nations rather than money making through telecoms licensing activities. But the new thinking at NCC at this period, highly favoured auction as a way to avoid the complexity, and the apparent suspicious that may trial another round of "beauty contest".

The difference between the "beauty contest" biding and straight auction and their various implications for the Nigerian market are very clear. Beauty contest would have kept the license fee for each of the GSM license at $100 million as prescribed by the new policy. With this method, it would have been clear how each of the operators would roll out and the kind of tariff it would have charged. The abilities of the companies to perform, rather than the amount it is capable of paying is the hallmark of this method.

The major concern of the auction process was its demand for above average transparency. In fact, it demanded a highly show of transparency, compelled by the overriding desire of the Obasanjo government to transact government business in the open and with a higher level of fairness.

On the other hand, auction was straight and simple. It does not require complex evaluation processes that pitch the bidders against each other, item by item. It does not task the bidders to engage in complex feasibility studies and business plans. It does not require high level of human resources and could take just few days of actual section process to achieve. It lasted just few days of auction design and two days of auction for four winners of the GSM license to emerge in Nigeria.

But the major concern of this method is its tendency to escalate the license fees beyond realistic levels as the bidders are more interested in out bidding the others to win the market. A non-performer can win the license in an auction situation at the expense of the performer. Performance is based on a mere assumption that no company which is not prepared to loose money would come for an auction, or that those who would want to fund such a license must undertaken due diligence. It is a verifiable fact that higher cost of licenses brought about in the auction process are borne by the subscribers, rather than the operators, while the auction situation stretches the operator by pushing up the roll out cost. In fact, it was seen around the world that some auction winners for the third generation mobiles in developed countries- could not roll out services on the later realization that they have paid too much for the licenses. In fact, some companies went bankrupt for this reason. Some others, who saw that the license was not worth the price to roll it out, freely gave back the licenses to their respective regulators.

Given the peculiar nature of the Nigerian circumstance, the Nigerian regulator chose to go by auction. The Information memorandum for the auction was published in November 2000. Before this publications, the NCC had used the request for expression of interest which was widely published to request the bidders to indicate technology of interest should they win the license. The result did not differ with the one during the first biding in the "beauty contest" method as more than 90 per cent of the companies indicated GSM technology as technology of choice for development. Hence, all questions asked by the companies which expressed interest, bordered on the development of GSM technology.

However, in the publications of the Information Memorandum, the NCC deliberately avoided using the name GSM for the licensing. In fact, the name of the process was tagged, digital Mobile Licensing, DML auction process. This choice of tag was to avoid criticism of NCC in the event of particularizing or prescribing technology. But NCC also made it clear in some sections of the Information Memorandum that the frequencies about to be auctioned are available in the popular GSM bands: 900MHz and 1800 MHz Bands. So it would appear that the choice of GSM was not only popular demand, but also by the constrains of frequency availability, which in fact gave credence to the reasons for the choice in the first place.

The publication of the Information Memorandum naturally set the stage for the auction. There were reports that MTN of South Africa started jubilations over the commencement of the licensing process for GSM in Nigeria, which the company was poised to bid as a front-runner. When the bid process started, NCC reserved a license for Nitel, which was exempted from the bidding but was to pay any price tag arrived at the auction, reducing the license available to three. At the start of the auction, some of the seventeen companies that bided in the first phase, dissolved into consortia. Five companies finally bided for the auction. They include MSI international of Netherlands, united network ltd, Econet wireless ltd, communication investments ltd, (CIL), and MTN Nigeria communications ltd. Another major operator, mts, which switched consortium partners from Telecel to Bellsouth of USA, submitted bids and requested few weeks' extension to finalize its submissions. Motophone declined to participate in the auction and instead, headed for the courts to lay claims to its frequency allocations upon which it has already rolled out services. The five pre-qualification companies deposited $20million, each. The stage was set for the auction.

Auction excitement

The D-Day for the auction for the digital mobile license auction came on Thursday, January 19, 2001, and the venue, Nicon Hilton hotel, Abuja, had all the trapping for the day. After several rounds, the auction Dragged into another day. Before the companies became license price tag weary, CIL indicated it willingness to pay a whopping $300 million for Nigeria's GSM license. United network and MSI, could not march the most commonly agreed $285 million which all the other three were willing to pay, hence, the license was lost and won. Winning the GSM license meant securing a 5 MHz frequency in the 900MHz band, and 15 MHz in the 1800 MHz band, a free numbering plan, an international gateway for internal transmission of the international traffic, all for 15 years duration of the license and the winner would belong to an exclusive class of four operators with this line of services for five years. The companies have 14 working days to pay the balance of the full license fee, and three months to commence services roaming agreement would not be signed between any network until 12 months after commencement of operations.

One of the winners, CIL, did not meet with the payment deadlines, and its licenses was revoked. This action, which was not envisaged in the auction, left the process without a replacement, thus, leaving the turf for three out of the four operators expected to commence service from the first day. This licenses was subsequently reserved for the second national operator, SNO, which the NCC planned at a future date.

The GSM celebrations

The frenzy began. Even the formal payment of the licenses fees to NCC were marked with press conferences and other forms of publicity that indicated the shape of things to come. The waiting game also started as some of the operators who promised to commence services as early as April, came to the realities of the infrastructure bottlenecks. But in august 2001, the two front-runners in the GSM race, Econet and MTN, launched commercial services, and since then, the story has never been the same again. For GSM launch and spread of services that put those small talk pieces in the hand of several Nigerians, telecommunication stands out as the biggest achievement of the present administration.

In just one year of commencement, more Nigerians are able to have direct access to telephone services, as both Econet and MTN were able to hit the million-subscriber mark. This is a mark that Nigeria was not able to achieve in more than 100 years of arrival of telephony technology in the country. The Usage pattern has continued to surprise even the operators and pundits who have applied the per capital income of $300 per annum average to calculate percentage of services penetration.

Interestingly, GSM services have not met with average standard of quality existing in other parts of the world and services at N50 per minute for pre-paid services and N25 per minute for post paid services are considered too high in the country. But Drop in the acquisition of services from about N20,000 in august last year, and less than N10,000 a year after, gives an indication of better things to come. With handset costs ranging from N8,000 to N100,000 per piece, affordability is currently being defined in different ways.

One year after the launch of services, MTN and Econet have ruled the market. Nitel has begun to make an in road, while globacom, which emerged from the ashes of CIL to win the license for the second national operator licenses, with a GSM attached, at $200 million in august this year, are expected to pop up the volume of competition and Drive down the cost. With an expected improvement in the interconnectivity of various networks, which have presented the biggest challenge to the industry, the growth of this service would continue to head for the sky where at least, a 10 million immediate demand for telephone services are still waiting. The improvement in business communications, and the development of ancillary market for the GSM industry has added to the employment opportunities created by the GSM launch to rub off very positively on the economy.

But how long GSM continues to dominate the market may be determined by the ingenuity of the operators to hold on their customers with reduced tariff and improved quality of services being rendered by the private operators like Nitel, the SNO and other key private operators some of whom are already deploying services using alternatives technologies like CDMA.

The race to third generation mobile systems may be the ultimate judge in that race, but GSM has definitely made its mark in the Nigerian telecommunication firmament

So for a nation that has embraced democracy, the morning for GSM is yet on creation. For a country, which has converted a premium services like GSM to its basic services, this technology must have its pride of place in history. The consumers of telecommunications services would determine how this record is sustained

[The author Mr. Aaron Ukodie has written another book titled ICONS OF ICT which is due for launch in Lagos on May 14, 2004]


Engr. Ogbonna Iromantu, pioneer Chief Executive of Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, at a recent conference on satellite communications for Nigeria argued that the launch of communications satellite is overdue. He cautions however that such launch must serve the needs of our people, must be commercially viable and its public-private partnership must be sustainable. His paper, which we started serialising in edition 144 concludes here with suggestions on how to make the Nigerian communiction satellite project a viable one.

Which way to Nigeria communications satellite?

by

Ogbonna Iromantu

nsl@consultant.com

Making the Nigerian satellite viable requires careful planning and market development and should not be rushed. A detailed market survey should be carried out both within Nigeria and outside. I propose a 3 phase Project approach.

Phase 1 includes:

(i) Requirements Analysis

(ii) Market survey and assessment

(iii) Determine services to be offered

(iv) Identify key stakeholders

(v) Identify the competition

(vi) Develop Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

(vii) Secure commitments

(viii) Determine coverage

(ix) Determine Technical considerations


Phase 2 includes:

Determine relevant cost issues including:

(i) Consultancy services

(ii) Building the satellite

(iii) Launching the satellite

(iv) Operations and Maintenance services

(v) Building the Operations Centre

(vi) Staffs costs

(vii) Training costs

(viii) Accommodation costs

(ix) Transport costs

(x) Logistics costs

Phase 3 includes:

(i) Develop Requests for Proposal (RFP)

(ii) Evaluate Proposals

(iii) Building the satellite

(iv) Launching the satellite

Before embanking on SAT-3, the South Africans engaged consultants who travelled extensively to virtually all African countries to evaluate the market. They met with Government Agencies and corporate bodies as well as Telecoms Operators and various stakeholders. In some cases, they obtained firm commitments to the project. The project was driven strictly from a commercial standpoint. In comparison, the Nigerian Satellite project appears to be driven from a developmental perspective. While this initiative from Government is laudable, however, its sustainability as a government project is suspect going by our experience of other government run enterprises. My suggestion is to incorporate the satellite project as a commercial enterprise in which government has a stake and commercial interests, also have a significant stake as a public-private partnership.

Another critical success factor for the sustainability of the Nigerian Satellite enterprise is that it should not limit itself to being a technology or access provider, but as a solution provider. I recall an interesting discussion I had around 1995 with representatives of Panamsat who came from South Africa to market Panamsat service. I requested to know if a small enterprise Internet Service Provider wanted access to the Global Internet Exchange through Panamsat, what should he do? I was told that he would buy a space segment from Panamsat and he would also have to make an agreement separately with his chosen Global Internet provider, before Panamsat would interconnect them. To me, the level of coordination required was way beyond the competence of small ISPs'. My suggestion to them, which they readily accepted, was that Panamsat should use its clout to develop strategic partnerships with different types of service providers such as global Internet or telephone service providers. This would provide a one-stop-shop for its customers. Since this proved to be a success, I wish to recommend that the Nigerian Satellite project adopts or adapts the same approach. While it should not lose focus as a satellite operator, its strategic partnerships will close the loop of providing total solutions for different needs for different levels of customers.

Such strategic partnerships should not be limited to the Telecoms Industry. In fact, the Broadcast Industry is even a higher consumer of Satellite Bandwidth. Many of us, in our homes and offices, receive close to 30 satellite TV Channels. In the PAL Broadcast TV system, which is our standard in Nigeria, each channel occupies about 6MHZ of Bandwidth. So the 30 channels that we receive occupy a minimum of 180 MHZ, that is the equivalent of 5 Satellite Transponders of 36 MHZ each. This is already a significant market for the Nigerian satellite to tap into. In addition, the Nigerian Radio and TV market is about the most extensive in Africa in terms of the numbers of such stations. Virtually every one of the 36 States in Nigeria has a Radio and a TV station. The Federal Government has close to 60 NTA (Nigerian Television Authority) stations In addition there are close to ten each of privately owned Radio and TV stations around the country. The reach of these stations is rather limited. They could benefit immensely from quicker and affordable access to a Nigerian satellite that has a stronger footprint over Nigeria and Africa to enable them expand the coverage of their stations and enhance their business opportunities and profitability. This is a ready market for the Nigerian satellite to harness.

To achieve e-Governance, some experts already speculate that we will need close to 200,000 MB (200GB) of Bandwidth for e-governance to be effective. Undoubtedly, a significant proportion of this bandwidth has to come from Satellite Bandwidth using VSAT in order to reach such locations where terrestial infrastructure is non existent or inadequate.

NITEL, we are informed, has 3 digital and one analogue Satellite Earth Stations with an estimated combined total of 7500 Voice Channels. Assuming each is a 64KB channel, this gives a combined total of 480 MB. This is very significant demand on satellite space segment. Therefore, NITEL, the four GSM Operators, the nearly 20 Private Telephone Operators (PTO's), the 30 active ISP's and the numerous VSAT Groups as well as the Second Network Operator amongst others are potential Strategic Partners. Also, strategic partnerships have to be structured with other Satellite Operators in order to procure satellite Interconnectivity, amongst other factors, and to achieve wider coverage as market demands may dictate.

It is estimated that in the coming years, some 5 million new jobs will be out sourced from the United States and Europe to developing economies where labour is much cheaper, the expertise exists and the communications infrastructure is developed, stable and reasonably priced. The new jobs will be particularly in the areas of software development and call-centre services. It is, for example, by demonstrating how many of such jobs that it can attract to Nigeria, that our satellite programme will be adjudged to be relevant to our needs and therefore acceptable to our people. Tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-agriculture, and so on, these are real people issues that can support poverty alleviation initiative and that the Nigerian Satellite programme should seek to promote and enhance in real practical ways.

It is evident that the political will to launch a Nigerian communications satellite exists, judging from the successful launch of the first Nigerian satellite for Scientific Research. It is critical that the political will be extended to providing political protection for the Nigerian satellite project in a world of fierce business and political competitions.

To summarise, the message of my opening paper is that the Nigerian Satellite should serve the needs of the people to be acceptable, it should be run commercially to be viable and it should develop Public-Private strategic partnerships to be sustainable. I wish you a most successful workshop.

[concluded].



CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 145

   $465million UP FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Close to $465million may be involved in expenditure within the public sector in Nigeria to provide telecommunications infrastructure in the next six months. The figures came from contracts which are up in finance, telecommunications, oil/gas and military sub-sectors of the public sector. Such basic infrastructure is capable of motivating a vibrant private sector into making dramatic investments. President Obasanjo attended his first-ever event in Telecom & ICT when he showed up at the e-government conference in March 2004. He has also, on May 29, the anniversary of his second term, appointed an economist to head the Central Bank thus shifting Central Bank's thrust from an 'Apex Bank' syndrome to a powerhouse of government's economic planning and implementation. This may mean a radical change and improved economic activities may be expected in the polity especially in telecommunications where significant impact has already been recorded by the regime.

. MTS FLAGS OFF LONG DISTANCE

COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES

MTS First Wireless which rolled out telephony services in March 2004 commenced long distance communications carrier services May 3, 2004. MTS has a basket of licenses which include national fixed wireless, national long distance communications, international data access, and Internet services. It deploys CDMA 2000 1x and is already providing phone services in Lagos.

 GROUPE SPECIALE MOBILE [GSM] V

PHONES-4-ALL, the most authoritative compendium of Nigeria's telecommunications development, edited by Nigeria's foremost telecom journalist, Mr. Aaron Ukodie is a must-read as it tells the story of Nigeria's development from Magneto to GSM. CYBERSCHUULNEWS started the serialisation of chapter 8 of the 122-page book with the edition 141. In this edition, PHONES-4-ALL talks about Interconnectivity politics and the shift to Frequency Auctioning.

INTERCONNECTIVITY CROSSROADS

by

Aaron Ukodie

ronukodie@yahoo.com


Right from 1997m the problem of interconnectivity in Nigeria had begun to rear it's ugly heads. Then chief Executive of NITEL, Professor Buba Bajoga had tagged all private telephone operators as parasites to the national carrier, NITEL. All attempts by private operators to interconnect with NITEL were rebuffed. It took extensive ministerial and regulatory pressure to achieve interconnectivity for the first private operator. By 1996.By 1996, Engr. Ogbona Iromantu-led NCC developed an interconnectivity framework, and the breakthrough was achieved in 1997 when multi-links, a Lagos bases PNL operator was interconnected with NITEL. The company became the first ever-private operator to begin services in Nigeria. Intercellular and EMIS were to follow in 1998. However motophone, which would have been recorded as the first ever-nationwide GSM operator, could not achieve interconnectivity with NITEL in 1998 when it concluded deployment in three locations in the country. The company made a bold refusal of the type of interconnectivity entered into by the other PTOs in an arrangement that was lopsided in favour of NITEL. Had the company yielded, it would have become a serious contender in the market where it had prepared the ground with a brand name Celia

However, its GSM services were functional and some subscribers to the network were able to speak to each other. But without an interconnection with NITEL, it remained a closed network. CIL also suffered the same interconnectivity with NITEL when it network was ready at the twilight of the general Abdusalami Abubakar regime. M-tel, the government owned company was stopped from its 1,000lines networked donated to the federal government by GSM phone maker, lm Ericsson

The m tel GSM network was later launched in mid 1999, after enormous pressure was brought to bear on professor Bajoga-led NITEL, to achieve Nigeria's first GSM services that were fully integrated into the global network. Motophone had by this time claimed to have developed 10,000. But the roll out of these networks was held up by lack of interconnectivity.

Before these, many other private phone operators have successfully achieved interconnectivity with NITEL. Multi links and intercellular, and Aba based Bourdex Telecoms, have also successfully introduced limited mobility facilities in their various networks. But these ties in their various networks. But these limited mobility services, and the limited service from M-tels' TACs network, left a lot of gap in the demand market.

Dollar Denominated GSM License Fee Era

The transition from the military to the democratic government in mid 1999, led to a renewed interest in telecommunication services. Holders of lapsed GSM license began to make claims to licenses and wanted a renewal. Those who failed to interconnect with NITEL before Mounted pressure. Some operator who paid license fee but were not issued appropriate fre1quencies, renewed pressure. The newfound freedom of expression in the new democracy resulted in lots of claims and counter claims for license. The new democratic government reacted very swiftly by setting up a p presidential committee headed by vice president Atiku Abubakar, to initiate a new policy to chat a faster way to realize the full potentials of the telecoms industry.

Dr. Engr. Emmanuel Nnama, an experienced telecoms engineer who headed the telecoms department of Nigeria ports authority, was appointed in mid 1999.
To take over from Engr.Iromantu, the pioneer EVC of NCC. Dr. Nnama, a radical of sorts, sought to achieve results very quickly, and took the advantage of a national seminar on telecommunications, convened by the federal government. The seminar, where all operatives in international and national telecoms environment were in attendance, was to chart a way for the new policy. At this point, Engr. Nnama had boasted that he would raise huge amount of money with GSM license. He indicated that the license fees would be denominated in dollars, with a reference to a similar action he took at the ports authority, which resulted in huge revenues
In fact, before the seminar was held, Dr. Nnama, convened a pre-seminar was held, Dr Nnama, convened a pre-seminar work- shop at the NCC, which was attended by all stake holders and who is who in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Hr initiated many preemptive policy actions, including the restriction of the number of cellular operators, and increasing the license fees. He was later to initiate another consultancy study, which prescribed the licensing of GSM service based on geo- political zones with each zones having two operators.
The decision to restrict the number of GSM operators led to the final recommendation of four GSM cellular operators with five-year exclusivity in the national telecoms policy. During national telecoms policy committee sessions Dr. Nnama Mounted advocacy for denomination of the GSM license in dollars. This later gained currency, and the license fee was pegged at $100 million dollars per license in the new national telecoms policy. The policy prescribed a condition that each of the four companies would at least, build out a 1.5 million subscriber network within the five year exclusivity period.
The policy released in September 1999,Received heavy knocks from the press, the industry operatives and the general public for putting the cost of a license at $100million adjudged too high with potentials to increase the cost of services to subscriber. In fact, the office of the vice-president Atiku Abubakar publicly put up defense with a promise that the money realized from the auction would be ploughed back into developing the transmission backbone of the country to ensure reliable and affordable service delivery. Although the policy was not immediately adopted, the industry came to term with the fact that licenses for GSM has been restricted to four, with a higher license fees. The language of the policy, and government's adoption of it's spirit; also presupposed that a lot of licenses and frequency allocations that were not commercially operational during this period, stood the risk of revocation.

For this amount, Dr. Nnama insisted it is a realistic value and was proved right in late 1999 when the NCC invited bidders for the four license slots. A total of 18 companies submitted bids to participate in the process. They include the earlier contenders: motophone, CIL, NITEL, MTN, M-tel, mts and united networks. Some PTOs like intercellular and multilinks joined the fray. Some international operators like MSI also bided.
After the first round of the bids, seven companies were pre-qualified. They are NITEL, mts, motophone, CIL, United Networks, MTN, and Vodanet. The pre-qualification was greeted with a lot of complaints. By then, Dr. Nnama has openly criticized ministerial interference in the process. When summoned by the House of Representatives, Dr Nnama publicly washed his hands off the process. He disregarded the ministerial committee on GSM which included the minister of communications as chairman, Minster of finance, the central bank governor minister of justice and attorney general of the federation, and secretary to the federal government, set up by the then minister of communications, Alhaji Mohammed Arzika. Dr Nnama saw this as an affront and set to take decisions with the independence of the NCC in mind.
He also disagreed with the opening of the bids process, which qualified NITEL at the expense of M-tel on what appeared a flimsy excuse because the minister favoured NITEL receiving a GSM license to M-tel. his independent viewpoint met with vehement opposition from the ministry of communications, and his disagreements with the minister on the account later saw to his exit from the commission appearing more radical in his approach, Dr. Nnama indicated that the commission would pursue a regional licensing formula following the committee he set up to take another passionate look into the GSM licensing process, and still realize the $100million for license for the ultimate four operators in the country. Before these events could reach collision head, the federal government cancelled the first round of the bidding process based on alleged irregularities. This ended the "beauty contest " bidding process for the Licensing of the four operators prescribed by the new National Telecoms policy as Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, the new Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, appointed to replace Dr. Nnama, appeared to find solution in the auction option.
[The author Mr. Aaron Ukodie has written another book titled ICONS OF ICT which is due for launch in Lagos on May 14, 2004]
10 YEARS OF

TELECOM DEREGULATION

A report featuring developmental milestones, industry statistics, investment opportunities, growth and investment forecast of Nigeria's telecommunications development.

ESSAY

Engr. Ogbonna Iromantu, pioneer Chief Executive of Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, at a recent conference on satellite communications for Nigeria argued that the launch of communications satellite is overdue. He cautions however that such launch must serve the needs of our people, must be commercially viable and its public-private partnership must be sustainable. His paper, which we started serialising in edition 144 continues in this edition as he poses and answers the question on whether a Nigerian communication satellite in desirable at the moment. Please enjoy it.


IS A NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE A VIABLE VENTURE FOR NIGERIA AT THIS TIME?

by

Ogbonna Iromantu

nsl@consultant.com



My gut feeling tells me that it is, also because nobody has convinced me that it is not. Some practical indicators from our recent developments in the ICT Industry in Nigeria point in the direction of viability. For example, when some of the GSM Operators in Nigeria did their viability assessment, they did not see a market far more than 500,000 subscribers in eighteen months and they designed their networks to handle that capacity over that period. But in less than one year, some of them passed that subscriber level, even hitting a million subscriber level within a year of coming into operation. Today, we have about three million subscriber level in the country. With each line generating an average of about N7,000 to N10,000 a month, this gives a revenue stream of between N21 billion and N30 billon a month . I assume that at least 30% of this revenue comes from traffic that passes through satellite connections. This is aside from revenue from Internet traffic and satellite transponder lease for corporate transactions in Banks and Oil companies. This is an indication of part of the market need that a Nigerian satellite has to fulfill.

Virtually all the banks in Nigeria today use VSAT for their corporate network interconnection and Wide Area Networks. Many of these banks consume at least 2mb of space segment. And there are about 100 banks, some with as many as 100 branches, yet we are only at the threshold of electronic banking which demands that huge volumes of data be processed with significant bandwidth demands. Oil companies operate in difficult terrains in the Niger Delta and offshore where communications infrastructure is difficult to implement. They depend on VSAT to reach such locations. Their bandwidth demands for both local and international communications is already in the Gigabit range for some of the major Oil companies.

Many Government Agencies have huge unmet demands for communications using VSAT. I recall that in late 1998, I chaired a Federal Government Committee to rationalise the requests of many Government Agencies for VSAT. The Agencies included:

(i) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs with requirement to connect to all of the about 100 Embassies and Missions around the world.

(ii) INEC to link to all state capitals

(iii) National Population Commission, also, with requirement to link to all state capitals

(iv) Nigerian Immigration Services with requirement to over 100 sites

(v) Nigeria Customs Services also, for over 100 sites

(vi) NDLEA, also about 100 sites

(vii) NAFDAC, for about 30 sites

(viii) NEMA, wherever there is emergency

(ix) Nigeria Police Force and others.

Since then, new Agencies have been created such as the National Open University who needs VSAT services. Beyond Nigeria, we have RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communications), a body that was created to rationalize the need of African countries for Satellite Communications and to spearhead the launching of an African Communications Satellite. They can form a strategic partnership with Nigeria to launch the Nigerian satellite to service the needs of Africa for satellite communication, in much the same way that the South African initiated SAT-3 submarine Fibre Optic Cable is serving the need of Africa for Fibre Optic interconnection. Talking of SAT-3, some experts have raised the question of whether you need an African or Nigerian Satellite when you have SAT-3. My answer is yes because their respective services are in most parts complementary, not exclusive. SAT-3 is the submarine Fibre Optic Cable originating from South Africa and connecting the countries on the West African Coast and terminating in Portugal in Europe. It is designed essentially for international connection through a specific point in Europe. On the other hand, VSAT provides connections to distributed locations anywhere both locally and internationally. Their niche markets are also different.

In fact, SAT-3 which links South Africa (Cape Town) to Portugal (Sesimbra) has landings only at Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Accra (Ghana), Cotonou (Benin), Lagos (Nigeria), Douala (Cameroon) Libreville (Gabon), Luanda (Angola) and Melkbosrand (South Africa), that is only about 8 eight countries while another 25 landlocked African countries can only connect to SAT-3 through terrestrial or satellite connections. It is estimated that African countries spend close to $600million US dollars annually to switch traffic through Europe. For example, to call Ghana from Nigeria, the traffic is routed via London. To call our next door neighbouring country Benin Republic or Niger, the traffic is first touted to London then through Paris to Benin or Nigeria. To achieve direct connections between African countries was, in part, the justification for SAT-3. It is also a good reason for a Nigerian or African satellite to ensure that even landlocked African countries also achieve dire connections amongst themselves. The annual expenditure of $600million can easily put two or three Communications Satellites in space.

Making the Nigerian satellite viable requires careful planning and market development and should not be rushed. A detailed market survey should be carried out both within Nigeria and outside.

I propose a 3 phase Project approach as follows:.

[To be continued]

THE RIGHT TO TALK
SOYINKA IN GHANA-MUST-GO ENVIRONMENT?

I wish to express my appreciation for this well laid out news items, they are quite revealing & educative. Politics in Nigeria is all about money, how does Soyinka who is not a moneybag intend to compete with our c...y politicians who will go to any length in being elected. I believe his party will just be one of the pack. Too many things are too wrong in this country, there are deliberate actions of the monied people to trample on the country perpetually. Pray we get out one day but it will be very bloody. Ati gbomo lowo ekuro ki soju boro. Once again I say thank you.

Temowo

 RIDE ON VODAGO!

I think the marriage will be a blissful one. Right from the beginning of this week VODACOM NIGERIA has made it clear to all present subscribers that they are in for a good business. I know you are aware of the fact that the new management has been sending SMS to subscribers about the changes. Let us hope there will be further expansion and better connectivity so that people like me and you will stop carrying two mobile sets around in order to be connected all the time and everywhere.

INSE SET TO RE-TRAIN TELECOM ENGINEERS

The Nigerian Society of Engineers will commence the re-training of engineers in telecommunications come June 2004. Ten courses are on the list of programs which will run from June through December 2004. The Association recently went into collaboration with THE EXECUTIVE CYBERSCHUUL to design cutting-edge training courses which focus on development of engineers.

iCYBERSCHUUL GLO'S TOO

THE EXECUTIVE CYBERSCHUUL, Lagos, has announced training schedules for the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the year. Telecommunications, website design and computer application training constitute the major focus of the several continuous running programs of the Institute.

CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 144

 AfriHUB TARGETS NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

FOR BROADBAND SERVICES

SkyTerra Communications Inc recently purchased a majority interest in Virginia based AfriHUB LLC as the latter fine-tunes its planned business project in Africa. AfriHUB [www.afrihub.com ]aims to provide satellite based broadband Internet access, domestic and international calling services to Africa especially in Nigeria where more than 250,000 undergraduates are yearning for internet access.
Nigerian Universities are the major interest areas as this is one of the early projects which Nigerian IT professionals in America are facilitating. The arrowhead of such initiatives, Prof. Manny Aniebonam, told cyberschuulnews that the first two campus facilities are expected to mature around midyear. AfriHub plans to spread 15 such ICT Parks across Nigeria by end of 2005.

For more information contact MannyA@Afrihub.com

JUNK OF PHONE WIRES COMPETE FOR LAGOS SKYLINE

The sky may soon be jammed with overhead telephone cables which appear set to disfigure the landscape in Lagos. Pre 1998, NITEL was the only provider of public phone services and its overhead wires were an eyesore in some parts of the country. Today with the coming of several PTO's who also offer wired services, the situation has gone worse. In the days of NITEL-only, there were standards but which were kept only in the provider's books, the new comers do not even seem to know that the standards exist. Go to Victoria Island, Agbara estate and such areas which hitherto were saved these ugly sights of junks of overhead wireBAN, BAN, BAN

In the USA, President George W. Bush has asked Congress to ban all taxes on high-speed Internet connections, saying too much regulatory oversight will stifle broadband deployment. He says "Broadband technology will enhance our nation's economic competitiveness and will help improve education and health care for all Americans,"
In Nigeria, The National Broadcasting Commission, without reference to the National Assembly, has imposed a ban on rebroadcast of foreign news in electronic media. Private electronic media owners also say they have been made to pay four times what their government owned counterparts pay for operating license.

PANIC IN INTERNET SERVICES MARKET

The current situation of the Internet Market in Nigeria, in particular, is confusing. Entrepreneurs and business owners within Internet Services are experiencing deep-seated heartache due to market uncertainties leading to an inherent inability to generate investor enthusiasm towards business and growth plans. All the indices show that this indeed is the province of panic.
With over 322 licensed Internet Service Providers (ISP), and about a fourth of these active in one form or the other with rapid entries and exits commonplace. There are indeed reasons for an entrepreneur to be worried.
Unfortunately, competition has been of an adversarial nature. Unable to withstand the pressures, a number of ISPs, including some of the early pioneers, have closed shop. Each new player goes for the same customers using the same strategies. Lower prices. Each new price offer results in shrinking margins for the operator. There has been little innovation at play since 1995 when the first Internet organizations were publicly noticed. There has been relatively little competition on quality, support, and customer service.

Who Then is an ISP?

An ISP truly defined is one that delivers Internet Services (not just Access) to a closed network of users. Internet Services includes access, content, web hosting, web services, etc. If this definition is applied within the Nigerian context, then you probably would have only a handful of ISPs.
With the death of dial-up, and uncleared ambiguities with respect to commercial private networks, it is increasingly difficult to find a true Internet Service Provider in these parts. ISPs in Nigeria have been generally unable to build similar-type closed networks for users in any significant number as to attract the sympathy of financiers and other stakeholders.
Without sufficient capital, attracting the right grade of human resources to support business operations is virtually impossible. Without the numbers, business hemorrhage sets in.
Moving Out of Panic
So what should an ISP do to emigrate out of the regions of market worries? There are several routes, we shall examine a few.
One, an ISP should recognize that the traditional ISP model is dead and should place emphasis on the business of Internet Provisioning, as opposed to hardware sales and equipment supply.
Two, grow out of the internet access rut. Access is nothing, service is everything. An access provider mentality is no different from one who constructs a public road and leaves others to think of the mechanisms of transporting users across the highway. Which is more lucrative?

Three, leverage on the latest technologies. Wi-Fi is fast, cheap and pervasive. There is no law that prevents ISPs from carrying VoIP traffic - they currently do anyway - at least for outgoing calls to any national or international destination. The latest technologies reduce cost, increase competitiveness, and enhance the development of innovative products.
Four, focus on the numbers. The residential market is underserved, for instance. The SME market also suffers from a lack of ISP attention. Meanwhile, cheaper technologies such as Wi-Fi represent for ISPs a potent competitive response to one, the PTO threat if targeted at large residential areas and estates, and two, to discovering the right tools for service delivery.
Five, be open to mergers and acquisitions. There is little evidence to show that the market would not consolidate over the next five years. It is likely that bigger players would swallow up fledgling ones. It is likely that more ISPs would close shop under the impact of shrinking margins, excessive competition, and the impact of alternative (cheaper) technologies that threaten the business model and antiquate assets already acquired.
The steps you take today would determine how tomorrow would be.
[Above essay was written for CYBERSCHUULNEWS by Fola Odufuwa, Executive Director, eShekels Limited, one of Africa's premier technology research firms based in Lagos, Nigeria]

BOOK SERIALISATION

GROUPE SPECIALE MOBILE [GSM] IV

PHONES-4-ALL, the most authoritative compendium of Nigeria's telecommunications development, edited by Nigeria's foremost telecom journalist, Mr. Aaron Ukodie is a must-read as it tells the story of Nigeria's development from Magneto to GSM. CYBERSCHUULNEWS started the serialisation of chapter 8 of the 122-page book with the edition 141. In this edition, PHONES-4-ALL talks about the politics of GSM licensing.

SCRAMBLE FOR GSM LICENSES

by

Aaron Ukodie

By late 1994, the NCC had begun to initiate actions to attract investors. At ITU Telecom 94 in Egypt, a pan African mobile cellular operator, Telecel made a presentation of its pan African coverage. The Executive vice chairman of NCC, Engr. Ogbona Iromantu who accompanied then minister of communications, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, also made a presentation about the deregulatory potentials of Nigeria, which attracted the interest of Telecel officials.
It was no surprise then that in early 1996, the succeeding minister of communications major general Tajudeen Olanrewaju, announced Telecel as the only company whose application for a GSM license has been fully processed and offered.
At this period, the procedure for the licensing was in three stages: submission of applications, licensing offering, license issuance and frequency allocation. After applications processing, a letter of offer is first made to the applying company with conditions, including offer acceptance, payment of relevant fee within six months of offer. If the conditions are met, the license is issued and the operator proceeds to the ministry of communication to obtain relevant frequencies.
The license fee of equivalent of half a million dollars ($500,000), payable for a GSM license was arrived at with a comparative reference to south Africa where the fee for a GSM license stood at about one million dollars and Ghana where it was about a quarter of a million. Nigeria stood at the middle bases on the license fees in the two countries.

However, in spite of its early interest, Telecel did not meet the conditions for the offer of license, leading to the lapse of the offer. The inability of this company to implement services was blamed on political and economic atmosphere prevailing in the country. In fact, before this period, theHon Minister of Communications and executive vice chairman of NCC, had also traveled to Ghana in early 1995, to convince south western bell corporation, sbc, of USA, to divert its huge investment portfolio for cellular service to Nigeria. When the sbc came to Nigeria to pursue the mission, it met another minister of communications. The perceptive instability discouraged the company, which later moved to South Africa where it became a member of the consortium that bought into Telkom South Africa.

With the failure of Telecel staring the nation in the face, the authorities opened the door for other operators to be issued license. Applications rolled in late 1996 and early 1997. With the failure of Telecel, the NCC decided to make many offers for license, expecting that few would meet the conditions. Nigeria's inability to offer digital mobile phone service was already embarrassing to the commission which also approved the existing private network links operators whose equipment have potentials for mobility to deploy limited mobility services across the country.
The offer letters to the companies included those on GSM for nationwide services on the 900 MHz band. Some were issued GSM license on regional basis on 1800 MHz while others were made offers on the 1900 MHz band for what was tagged as personal communication services available in the united states. Some of the companies who fulfilled the conditions, including payment of the relevant fee and were issued licenses in the 900 MHz bands included motophone Ltd, wireless system ltd, communications investments ltd. (CIL) M-tel the government mobile cellular operator whose payment of the fees marked a departure from the attitude of NITEL to the regulators. MTS, also which has available frequencies in the extended GSM bands, EGSM, also paid for a GSM license. All the companies also got allocation of about 5MHz each in the 900MHz bands. Motor phone and CIL subsequently began deployment of equipment in the same year, 1997. Another company from South Africa, MTN, first applied as INTEGRATED MOBILE SYSTEMS, IMS, and later changed it's name back to MTN before it was issued a license after general Abdusalami Abubakar took over from late Gen. Sani Abacha.
Some of other companies, including some PNL operators, received offers but did not meet the conditions. At some point between 1998 and 1999, many companies were holding GSM and PCS license offer that have lapsed but most of these companies continued to lay claim to holding a valid license.
Some began to approach the ministry of communications for frequencies without fulfilling the conditions of license offer

[ Next edition: Interconnectivity crossroads ]

ESSAY

Engr. Ogbonna Iromantu, pioneer Chief Executive of Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, at a recent conference on satellite communications for Nigeria argued that the launch of communications satellite is overdue. He cautions however that such launch must serve the needs of our people, must be commercially viable and its public-private partnership must be sustainable. His paper, edited slightly for brevity, is presented here under a borrowed title of Paths to Nigeria’s Telecommunications Satellite.

PATHS TO NIGERIA’S TELECOMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE

by

Ogbonna Iromantu

nsl@consultant.com

Eight years ago, when we issued the first licenses at the Nigerian Communications Commission for Internet Services, we were queried because it was believed that it had security implications. Two years later when we issued the first licences to Private Telephone Operators, the story was the same and it was extremely difficult for those operators to secure Interconnectivity from NITEL. We were undeterred. We were motivated by certain principles and guided by the knowledge and conviction that we would be proved right. So we went ahead to issue the first VSAT licences in 1997. The authorities were infuriated. They set up a panel on me, I survived it. We did not give up. By early 1999, we issued the first GSM licences. At that point, they felt they had had enough of me.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, think of where we would be today if we had succumbed to those pressures. Think of Nigeria not being part of the Internet revolution. Think of the significant contributions that Private Telephone Operators have made in using wireless technology to extend telephone services instantly to communities that had lost hope of phone services or had already been ten years on the waiting list. Think of the transformation of the banking industry from the days of tally numbers to the present electronic banking services through the use of Satellite VSAT services. Think of how GSM has completely revolutionized business and social contacts. When you think of all these, then you begin to imagine the role that Satellite Communications has played in providing a significant transmission medium for all these developments in our communications services. You also begin to wonder, why we should not consolidate all these gains through our own communications Satellite. And that is why we are all here today. I feel honoured and fulfilled that you found me worthy to deliver the opening paper at this very important workshop.
Let me caution that you will face no less challenges in proposing a Communications Satellite for Nigeria than we faced in proposing Internet, PTO, VSAT or GSM service for Nigeria. This time, the obvious question would be why should Nigeria spend millions of dollars in launching a communications satellite when millions of our people are living below poverty line. For me, the answer is simple, if you don't then you may not be able to fully consolidate the gains that communications technology brings, through creating more jobs, creating more wealth and extending services and development to rural communities. If we don't, the danger is that even millions more of our people, in the long run, will have no opportunity of rising above the poverty line because they will be held perpetually below the digital divide, an expression which has become the new paradigm to describe the division between the rich and the poor.
So how do you win the argument. Primarily by winning over the informed communities and stakeholders and through them winning over the general public. Also through the press, seminars and workshops such as this. Let the people hear the benefits and not be held back by the problems of today. You know, when the Soviet Union launched its first satellite, the Sputnik, in about 1957, some parts of Moscow were still using pit toilets. I saw some of those in 1964 when I went there for University education. When the United States of America landed a man on the moon in 1969, black people in some parts of America were barely allowed to vote in elections. We need not necessarily follow their examples, but it is pertinent to note that this is the dilemma that evolutions in technology pose for nations.
So is a Nigerian communications satellite a viable venture for Nigeria at this time?

[To be continued

Life FROM ISLANDNEWS

Hypertension -The silent killer

An incipient health crisis on the Island

A recent health survey reveals a large percentage of Islanders are hypertensive. The alarm does not simply lie in the ailment's high prevalence; the real concern arises from the fact that sufferers were largely ignorant before their blood pressure test revealed they were at risk. There are also other rising medical problems which experts say are triggered by unwholesome lifestyles, and the socio-economic conditions peculiar to Island's diverse communities and character....Read all about the prevalence of hypertension on the Island in the latest edition of Island News. Get your free copy now!

CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 143

 NITEL CLEANS OUT 220,000 LINES OFF ITS BOOKS

71 telephone exchanges which had remained unserviceable for several years have finally been removed from the books of Nigeria's First National Operator, NITEL. The exchanges, mainly analogue types, provided nearly 220,000 lines. The company may require to close down a further 150,000 telephone lines in the next 12 months and commission 400,000 to remain competitive and retain its hold of 50% of all the forecast wired telephone lines in the country by end of 2005. It is on its way to putting 250,000 lines into Lagos very shortly.
A turn around effort is being led by Pentascope International aimed at injecting modern facilities, re-training the operatives for change and preparing the company for full privatisation.

SLASH IN PHONE TARRIF

Forces of competition and subtle maneuvers of the regulator are driving telephone tariff downwards in Nigeria. M-tel which provides 15% of the mobile phones in the country announced a 54% reduction on its international call rate just as it sliced off 38% on SIM packs. M-tel’s subscribers will now pay N45 per minute for international calls, down from N99, and buy SIM packs for N6,500 down from N10,500.

 ECONET CHANGES NAME, REDEFINES OFF-PEAK, OFFERS MORE INCENTIVES

Econet Wireless Nigeria has announced a change of its name to Vee Networks Limited and says it will henceforth trade under the brand name Vodago. It also informed its subscribers that the off-peak call charge rate would now be N30.00 per minute or 60K per second with effect from April 21, 2004.Off peak period is now 10.00pm to 6.00am all days of the week.
In recent time, telecom service providers in Nigeria are consulting various bags of trade initiatives to attract patronage through genuine incentives and outright tricks, all happening at a time of low economic activities occasioned by non release of federal budget. High-level competition, uncertain government economic policies and rapid changes in technology are conspiring to shrink margins in the industry. With the budget signed into law April 21, a significant rise in service patronage is envisaged.

ICOMS OF ICT” FOR LAUNCH IN LAGOS

35 persons who are known to have played remarkable roles in the development of Information and Communication Technology in Nigeria have been profiled in a book called ICONS OF ICT due for launch on May 14, 2004, in Lagos. The book is written by Mr. Aaron Ukodie, himself a pioneer in telecom and ICT journalism. In 2003, Mr Ukodie edited the most authoritative record of telecommunications development in Nigeria from Magneto to GSM in the form of a compendium he calls PHONES-4-ALL.

.FCC DEALS A BLOW TO AT&T on INTERNET CALLS

In the USA, Phone Regulator, FCC, ruled yesterday that AT&T must pay local access charges on long-distance phone calls that originate and end on public switched phone networks but use IP networks in between. As a result of the decision, AT&T may have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred access fees.

 TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION

VoIP an d YOU

VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, allows you to make telephone calls using a computer network, over a data network, like the Internet. It is generally and significantly cheaper than the traditional phone service. VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the Internet, then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number. Some call it Internet Telephony, or Internet Phone while some just say it is Internet Voice. It is usual for Providers to impose their choice name on their subscribers.

You can use your computer while you talk on phone. Contrary to popular assumption, it may not be a win-win situation as a broadband (high speed Internet) connection is required.
Some VoIP providers offer their services for free, normally only for calls to other subscribers to their service. When they do, they may be up to a game which ultimately helps their business. See story above in which AT&T burnt its fingers in one of such games. Your VoIP provider may permit you to select an area code different from the area in which you live. This means you may not incur long distance charges if you call a number in your area code regardless of geography. It also means that people who call you may incur long distance charges depending on their area code and service.
Some VoIP providers charge for a long distance call to a number outside your calling area, similar to existing, traditional wireline telephone service. Other VoIP providers permit you to call anywhere at a flat rate for a fixed number of minutes.
Because Internet Voice is digital, it may offer features and services that are not available with a traditional phone. If you have a broadband internet connection, you need not maintain and pay the additional cost for a line just to make telephone calls.
With many Internet Voice plans you can talk for as long as you want with any person in the world (the requirement is that the other person has an Internet connection). You can also talk with many people at the same time without any additional cost.
Of course some Internet Voice services don't work during power outages and the service provider may not offer backup power. When Internet Phone arrive your environment, ensure you ask questions and know details of the facilities and compromises before you throw away the traditional phone service.

[Contributed by J Abraham, California]

  GROUPE SPECIALE MOBILE [GSM] III

PHONES-4-ALL, the most authoritative compendium of Nigeria's telecommunications development, edited by Nigeria's foremost telecom journalist, Mr. Aaron Ukodie is a must-read as it tells the story of Nigeria's development from Magneto to GSM. CYBERSCHUULNEWS started the serialisation of chapter 8 of the 122-page book with the edition 141. In this edition, PHONES-4-ALL talks about why Nigeria chose GSM among other standards of Mobile Communications Systems.

WHY GSM WAS CHOSEN AS A NATIONAL STANDARD

by

Aaron Ukodie

ronukodie@yahoo.com

The choice of GSM as a national standard for Nigeria in 1995 was based on five compelling factors according to the contents of the report recommended by the NCC to the ministry of communications, which gave the approval. The recommendation appeared to be more bothered about services at that particular period without giving consideration to the frequent changing dynamics of the industry these compelling reasons adduced by the NCC for this choice can be summarized into

Technology Appropriateness

One of the major potentials of the GSM, which is yet to be equaled today, is its ability to roam internationally and into other networks. Regarded as a European standard, and with a lot of business relationship existing between Nigeria and Europe, this feature was very fascinating. In addition, GSM was founded on the planks of mobility, unlike the CDMA, which was planned initially as a replacement for the fixed line technology, hence it's ability for massive coverage as against roaming potentials. At this time, GSM was also more user and operator Driven than manufacturer Driven as against its major contender, CDMA which was proprietary. In addition, it has an open, non-proprietary standard architecture

Technology Maturity

By 1995 GSM was fully matured and already deployed in Africa. It was more tested and proven. Since the African environment lacks the expertise to manage other technologies that were combining, or are being tested, a favourable consideration was given to the one already matured and are being deployed across the globe with considerable ease and success. At this period, dual mode and tri-mode handsets were already present on the shelf and its downward and upward integration to first generation and third generation mobiles systems respectively was already proven

With almost all European countries and majority of African countries on GSM, the market was filled with a lot of potentials. In fact by then, all the global mobile personal communication system, GMPCS, operators like iridium, global star, Teledesec, and ICO, have all adopted the GSM standard transmission and roaming.

Market Acceptability

With operators and users forming such technology pressure groups like the GSM MoU association, and the speedy spread of Usage across the country, topped with the open system architecture of GSM, the market acceptability was compelling. In fact many manufacturers began to produce switches that are very compatible to GSM, which is more radio-based technology as a platform for compatible interconnectivity. Handset market was growing very fast as well as other ancillary markets that were growing with this technology.



Futuristic Potentials

The GMPCS market may have dwindled considerably but by 1995, it was about the next technology to beat. GSM integrates this technology. This is the reason why current services like THURAYA, which appears to have survived the jinx of GMPCS, finds roaming compatibility with GSM. With the number of countries launching this service, it appeared the de facto international or global standard. Implementation frequencies were made to include 900, 1800, 1900, MHz bands. It has all the potentials for the ITU's IMT 2000 service, i.e. the third generation mobiles. It supports some feature expected of the third generation mobile like data transmission like the basic short messaging services, SMS. All these factor influenced the choice of GSM as a national standard to pursue the gradual deregulation policy adopted by the NCC during this early stage of industry deregulation characterized by massive opposition by the national carrier whose monopoly was under serious threat.

[Above text is culled from page 42 of PHONES-4-ALL]



CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 142
 
DBI, ABUJA TAKES OFF

The Digital Bridge Institute, DBI, NCC’s telecommunications Institute Abuja has commenced business. Director of The Institute Dr Idika Ochaa announced in Lagos recently that training courses in telecommunications management would commence soon. The DBI is one of the most radical creations of Nigeria's Regulator in 2003 as it is a true answer to provision of human resource for the emerging telecommunications industry.


NEW TECHNOLOGY/ VoIP PRODUCTS

Voice Service Telecom Operators may be in for a future of hot challenge as a new US based VoIP company, Skype has developed a software which enables users of Microsoft's PocketPC handhelds to access the Internet and make free VoIP calls via Wi-Fi hot spots. Skype calls its software PocketSkype, It is the latest of the fledging products which are results of a rush of technology companies to use Internet phone and Wi Fi. It was launched on April 6, 2004.

Meanwhile, Gallup in USA reported that 34% of respondents said they would switch to VoIP if it would save them 20% or more on their phone bills. Respondents also said they are more concerned about reliability than voice quality.



BOOK SERIALISATION

GROUPE SPECIALE MOBILE[GSM] II

PHONES-4-ALL, the most authoritative compendium of Nigeria's telecommunications development, edited by Nigeria's foremost telecom journalist, Mr. Aaron Ukodie is a must-read as it tells the story of Nigeria's development from Magneto to GSM. CYBERSCHUULNEWS started the serialisation of chapter 8 of the 122-page book with the edition 141. In this edition, Aaron talks about How GSM was chosen among other standards of Mobile Communications Systems.


NIGERIA’S DATE WITH MOBILE CELLULAR

by

Aaron Ukodie

If 1992 was significant to GSM evolution, it was a year when Nigeria experienced analogue mobile telephony for the first time, following the earlier introduction of the system by the then mobile Telecommunications Services Ltd, MTS, led by Engr. Richmond Aggrey. It was during this period that NITEL also launched a TACs analogue mobile net-work while MTS later began to offer services on an ETACs network.
Same year in 1992, the laws, establishing Nigeria’s Telecom regulatory authority, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC was instituted via Decree 75, of 1992. the Commission was later inaugurated in 1993, and with this came avalanche of requests for mobile cellular services licenses. The commission headed by the highly intellectually minded telecom expert, Engr. Ogbonna Iromantu, began to develop regulatory frameworks for issuing licenses for various types of telecom licenses. The Commission was confronted on one hand with many requests for analogue Mobile cellular licenses, and on the other hand, by the emergence of digital mobile services with a potential to spread fast across the world. More disturbing was that the spectrum plan for the GSM on the 900MHz band and 18000 MHz band were overlapping with the TACs, AMPS, and ETAC’S bands.
As soon as it was inaugurated in mid 1993, the NCC itself began to advice some of the operators to direct attention towards GSM. Before then, MTS had announced plans to deploy GSM technology. With the advice of the NCC, EMIS also announced it’s plan to go GSM, followed by another company SIOTEL, being promoted by multimillionaire businessman, chief Sunny Dike Odogwu, publisher of the POST EXPRESS Newspapers.

How GSM was chosen as a national standard

The commission slowed down the request pending the outcome of a study which it commissioned in 1994, to recommend a commend a common standard that Nigeria would adopt for the deployment of mobile cellular services in such a way that Nigeria would advance the regulatory environment. An intellectually managed telecom consultancy firm. TELECOM ANSWERS ASSOCIATES, headed by Engr.Titi Omo-Ettu , concluded the study in record time. Although the report did not only reject a restriction of any technology for Nigeria, it in fact, provided a detailed potentials and limitations of all available technologies for mobile cellular services. It came short of choosing the code division multiple access, cdma another technology that was at this time emerging as a contender to GSM.

In January 1995, the Engr. Iromantu-led NCC reviewed and forwarded a recommendation to the ministry of communications. Major highlight of this recommendation was the choice of GSM as a national standard for national coverage while any other digital technology could be deployed regional mobile cellular services. It also recommended gradual phasing out of the analogue technology. This recommendation had a direct reference to the NCC regulatory design to issue two categories of licenses: the regional and national licenses. But some industry critics stood against this decision, emphasizing the need to allow any investor to choose the need to allow any investor to choose the technology it finds suitable to provide services and ensure returns on investment.

The recommendation of the NCC was presented to a ministerial committee, which approved the recommendation, leading to the final adoption of the report and it’s publication in June 1995.

[Next edition Why GSM was chosen as a national standard ]

ESSAY

The Face of the Digital divide

By

Edward Popoola

Nigeria's IT Youth Ambassador.

Walking into the hall filled with over 250 students, nothing could be so challenging than being there to inform, educate, and motive these young people of your generation. I figured it was going to be fun filled and interesting talking to these young men and women about information technology, but leaving the venue, was a new me, with a practical understanding of what the digital divide means.
I had received this invitation like some other ones and was pink with anxiety to once again stand as the IT Youth ambassador to preach the IT gospel. The invitation was not what got me pink, it was the school. A college of Technology. I took it upon my self to get the best I could, I went into my closet and searched the books until I was satisfied. The day came and there was I ready to walk on in the line of duty.
Five minutes into the talk, a nasty realisation befell me. I could see written on the faces of my audience what could best be described as question marks. I kept talking for another five minutes this time with some techie jokes, yet the expression remained the same. It was then I knew something was wrong somewhere. I had been speaking on things which made little or no meaning to my audience; the technical part of the technology called InfoTech. I was surprised but was not alarmed. I had spoken to some university students and the response to the techie parts of my speech had been welcoming, at least showing they have an idea of what I was talking about.
To help the situation and to do a great deal of assistance to the inquisitive and avid listener, I flowed into a less technical discussion of which I could hear the silent yell of 'thank goodness'. Responses followed with nods, smiles and occasional side talks from my beloved audience. I left the place fulfilled but with an acknowledgement of the fact that the harvest is indeed ripe but the labourer are few.
For that moment I felt with my skin and beheld with my eyes what the divide really means. I could see in these young people a desire to learn, to know and to grow. But it was just too difficult for them to hide that open wound of ignorance. Less than 5% of our graduates leave school with IT knowledge, let alone skills and this is the real face of the digital divide. The Basic understanding of what IT means is still not known among the majority of our young people. Although in some schools, some students have shown a thorough understanding of the subject, our focus this time should rather be on the other majority.
These are young men and women who we hope will use IT as a tool for development. They are our future leaders. That singular experience made me to realise that a lot still needs to be done to raise the level of IT education among the Nigerian Youth, the greatest asset the country has got. This is a college of technology and graduates from this school are among the millions of Nigerian Youth who we expect to be globally competitive.
Today the new word is outsourcing, getting skilled expatriates to do a job. Then the question is, let alone our own problems, can the Bill Gates of today come to Nigeria to get enough skilled young minds to solve the American problem like they do to young Indians?
The harvest is ripe…
[Edward can be reached at me@edwardpopoola.com ]


Course Notes also available in C-D for N5,000.00 only
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'...MENopause, MENorrhagia, MENstruation, MENarche all make woMEN say MEN are their problem...'

Contributed by O Majek [ Edited]


CYBERSCHUULNEWS EDITION 141

 ESTABLISHED

COUNCIL OF WEST AFRICA INFOTECH PROFESSIONALS

The recent International ICT Conference 2004 which Ghana hosted along with the celebration of her independence rose with ICT eggheads in the sub region agreeing to establish The Council of West Africa Information Technology Professionals, CWAITP. With good backing of the Ghanaian Government and a very strong presence of Nigeria ICT professionals both at home and in the Diaspora, The Council emerged with a resolution to drive ICT as the core tools for a more purposeful and sustainable development and creation of wealth for the sub region.

The Council says it will carry