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Editions 231 - 260
CyberschuulNews 260
Upper Legislative Houses in Nigeria and SA
push for new, controversial laws
South Africa’s Department of Justice has been tinkering
with various laws aimed at, it says, dealing with crimes
that cellphones can be used to commit. Its recent
attempt at pushing a law through the Upper legislative
House, the National Council of Provinces, NCOP, to
require that international roamers register their phones
at entry into South Africa, some say, may practically
put a strain on international roaming Agreements between
South African mobile operators and those of the rest of
the world. Major Cell phone service providers have been
fuming about the proposed law but it appears the NCOP is
going ahead to pass it.
In Nigeria, the Upper house, the Senate, also says it
will amend the Nigerian Communications Act of 2003. If
it does, it won’t be a new initiative as the Senate had
actually tried unsuccessfully to make amendment to the
law during the last regime but was stopped apparently
when the former President Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda
became the only issue important to legislation. Chances
are that the amendment will reduce the acclaimed powers
of the Nigerian Communications Commission especially in
the area of its relationship with the Universal Service
Provision Fund, USPF, which the Act created.
Analysts appear unruffled about the prospects of
amendment to the law, any law, except that politicians
who are pushing for the amendment are not those with a
track record of being on the side of mass interest.
Poor Broadband
penetration dominate Kigali Talk
Africans are still talking. The theme has now shifted to
asking for ‘immediate action’. That was the call of the
ITU big boss Dr Hamadoun Toure, himself an African, who
used popular indices of poor internet access in the
midst of fast mobile telephone growth to ask African
leaders to act immediately and refrain from asking for
charity. He was speaking at Kigali, Rwanda where
'Connecting Africa' was discussed early in the week.
Things are looking up actually. The Nepad ICT Broadband
Infrastructure Network (NBIN), launched only recently
has been expanded to lay undersea cables on the West and
East African coasts. It is however not the beginning
that matters but when the infrastructure commences to
carry traffic. With government[s], you really cannot
count your chicks until the eggs are hatched.
Governments investing in telecom? Forget it!
Evolution and
Opportunities for Data Services
In the USA, the CDMA Development Group (CDG) recently
announced the availability of a white paper entitled
‘Maximizing Network Value: Capitalizing on the next wave
of mobile broadband data applications.’ The paper
examines how CDMA mobile broadband technologies have
lead the evolution of mobile data services and how
operators capitalized on their competitive advantage to
drive revenue and strengthen their market position. It
also analyzes future services that next-generation CDMA
technologies will enable.
According to the paper, the availability of mobile data
and its importance to operators have evolved with the
introduction of high-speed network technologies. From
short message service (SMS) supported by 2G technologies
to 3G mobile broadband-enabled multimedia services, 3D
gaming and location-based services, wireless data has
grown to provide up to 20-30 percent of operators
revenues and has become a key differentiator in the
highly competitive mobile market place. The next major
step will be the introduction of all-IP, next-generation
infrastructure, which offers low latencies, ultra
high-speed data and advanced quality of service (QoS)
and support for the quadruple-play: mobile digital
video, voice, broadband and broadcast. This will enable
operators to compete with fixed Internet-based
businesses, offer a wide range of services, including
VoIP, advertising, social networking, and mobile TV, and
differentiate by integrating presence, location and
mobility into these services.
CDG claims that CDMA operators have benefited from a
robust wireless data platform that has proven easy to
evolve as market needs dictate, have been able to
introduce services at least 6 months to 1 year faster,
and offer more device choices.
More Troubles for
NITEL
Analysts’ hope for a pleasant surprise on the
re-awakening of NITEL/Mtel appeared almost dashed last
week as workers of the troubled companies seemed to have
suggested to Government that their new buyers have no
clue to bringing the First National Operator and its
subsidiary back to the market for active competition.
Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd, NITEL, which loomed
large in its monopoly days went into stress in the
process of privatisation and dipped into distress when
bailout attempts kept shifting from one problem to the
other. It eventually landed on the stable of a
government’s ‘conglomerate’ called Transcorp, itself a
curious creation which is hardly different from NITEL’s
antecedents.
The workers have been issuing ultimatum in different
directions while government is busy fighting various
wars on economic and political fronts: its own
legitimacy, an Ironlady in the House (thank God it is
now over), worsening [yes worsening!] public power
supply, poor quality of telephone services, name it!!.
If government is in the mood to listen to the workers,
it is yet to be seen. Meanwhile, federal legislators
have vowed to open the books once again on Pentascope,
one foreign contraption created to bail the sick NITEL
out of troubles in 2003 but which actually sent it to
the mortuary.
ESSAY
Reprobating MTN,
Celtel case against NCC
by
Reuben Muoka
One African proverb welcomes that sometimes, the winds
need to blow to expose the anus of the fowl. It may not
be for the sake of repudiating the character of the fowl
that this proverb so demands, but to show that the
pretentious fowl has something ugly that it hides below
its fluffy and beautifully woven tail covering.
The recent notice issued the GSM operators, by the
Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, intimating an
intention to enforce a compensation regime for the
suffering subscribers over persistent poor quality of
services in their networks, aptly represents the wind
spoken about in this African proverb.
With the wind exposing their anus, they are now in a fit
of rage with the regulator whom many have accused of
protecting the operators. In going to the court to
restrain the NCC, Celtel and MTN have exposed their ugly
sides. They have before now pretended publicly that they
so loved the subscribers that they would never
contemplate any action that would offend them. Today,
most subscribers would doubt those pretentious
dispositions. If these operators so love them in deed,
they would have jumped at the opportunity given by the
NCC’s decision to compensate the long suffering patrons.
But instead, they chose to stop the regulator with a
court action, consequently, seeking to prolong the
untold losses of the subscribers to poor quality of
services.
The contents of the reported notices to the operators
made it crystal clear that the compensation is
justifiable, if not long over due. According to reports,
the Commission duly informed the operators that it “is
still being inundated with complaints from subscribers
on the issue of poor and unacceptable level of quality
of service on the networks of the mobile services
operators in Nigeria, resulting in losses to
subscribers”. The regulator also expressed its
disappointment thus: “the Commission observes with
serious concern that the quality of service in the
Nigerian Telecommunications industry has remained poor
in spite of the Direction issued to the operators, with
the obvious implication that subscribers continue to
suffer and incur losses owing to the poor and
deteriorating quality of service”.
Whether the two operators, who have found reasons to
partner against the NCC are able to read the situation
is one thing, the remote possibility of their winning
the motion on notice is another. The fact of the matter
still remains that they have, through subterfuge,
delayed the subscriber compensation regime which ought
to have commenced this October 2007. The action border
on business without morals and it is hoped that the
Nigerian judiciary would not give enough elbow room for
this escapade.
GSM operators need not be told that they are traveling
along a very unpopular path of infamy and may do well to
avoid a reawakening of forgotten displeasures,
inconveniences and financial burden it has put on the
path of its subscribers in these past eight months when
the ugly phenomenon of poor quality of services have
become unbearable.
In fact, public angst against the operators has already
begun to manifest, even before the substantive case
comes up for hearing. A representative of one of the two
operators was booed at the recent Senate Public Hearing
on quality of service, when he told his audience that
the suffering of the subscribers touches its company so
deeply. A representative of the National Association of
Nigerian Students, NANS, at the same event informed of
an ultimatum to the operators to withdraw the infamous
court action. These may be a tip of the iceberg of what
lay in the hearts and minds of GSM subscribers across
the nation.
Is it not absurd that the operators have failed to
improve quality of services after many admonitions by
the regulator, and after the operators themselves have
severally made strong promises to expand the networks to
ease the burden of the subscribers? The connotation to
this court action is that behind all those empty
promises, was an avaricious design to deliberately and
immorally sustain the ugly situation of forcing
subscribers to pay for services not rendered while the
operators keep smiling to the banks!
Perhaps, the action of the operators have exonerated the
NCC from many blames over the poor quality of service
issues as the commission’s due process approach in
whipping the operators into line have been
misinterpreted as treating them with kid gloves. While
it lasted, the operators were enjoying the tantrums
being mistakenly thrown at the NCC over the operators’
faux pax on QoS debacle Now, with the NCC wielding the
big stick to bite, after barking at them, Nigerians have
seen the true colours of the operators as they have been
hiding behind the bashing that NCC was receiving on
their behalf all along! They were very comfortable then,
but as events have turned, they can afford to take same
regulator to court.
For their inability to seize the opportunity to do key
things and avert the big stick, the operators have now
lost a big hiding place and are now seeking the
protection of the courts. The legality and equity in
their case against the NCC, and the Nigerian subscribers
is already lost in the court of public opinion. It is
expected that the NCC would at some point, sue the GSM
operators for attracting the commission a wrong
perception to the point that even some misinformed
government officials, including some legislators, freely
made scathing remarks that has no basis in telecoms
regulation.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the GSM operators
still have a leeway to redeem their image if they can
seize this opportunity to withdraw their case, offer
apologies to the NCC, the subscribers, and the nation,
and commence the compensation regime for the subscribers
that they have been taking away their money for services
not rendered.
The latest action of the NCC also offers the operators a
good opportunity for inward lessons in
subscriber-network management as they have all along
been engaged in indiscriminate issuance of SIM packs. As
they are faced with paying billions of naira on
compensation for poor quality of services on the number
of SIM packs in circulation, they may now realize need
to sell according to the capacity available in the
network, and instead, apply the excess funds to improve
quality of service and their image for good!
While the damning public opinion against their actions
prevails, the operators must be told that most observers
believe that what they are doing at the court is simply
to buy time while they quickly expand their networks to
convince the NCC that the compensation is not necessary.
But, do they really need this big stick to do what is in
their best interests?
Reuben Muoka, Former Deputy Communications Editor of
Vanguard Newspapers is a Telecoms Analyst
CyberschuulNews 259
Mobile
Number Portability: The Next Agenda
The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, may have
commenced setting an agenda for Mobile Number
Portability, MNP. An industry consultative meeting in
Lagos early in the week brainstormed on the subject
under the watch of NCC executives. The Lagos meeting
reviewed best practice experiences of successful
implementation, sought the input of operators and
experts and discussed issues such as implementation
challenges, customer education, charging, and rollout
modalities.
Mobile Number Portability allows you the freedom to move
(or ‘port’) your mobile phone number from any Service
Provider or Network to another, while keeping your same
number.
CPN reconstructs IT
curriculum in primary and junior secondary schools
The Computer Professionals (Registration Council of
Nigeria), CPN, has presented new IT training curricular
for Primary and Junior Secondary schools to the Federal
Government. This was the highlight of its discussion at
the Annual General meeting of all IT professionals in
Nigeria mid-week in Abuja. The President, Dr. Mrs.
Adenike Osofisan, told Minister of Education that the
Council is also taking a critical look at the curriculum
being used for computing training in tertiary
institutions and reviewing it to reflect present
realities and development.
UN leads effort to
care for people with disability
Information from Techshare 2007, a conference staged by
the Royal National Institute for Blind People disclosed
that access to online services for people with
disabilities, including e-government services, is set to
become a key focus of efforts by the United Nations (UN)
to promote human rights.
The UN Convention on the rights of persons with
disabilities is the first human rights convention
adopted this millennium, and almost half of the
convention is devoted to access to information
technologies.
The key aspects are the definition of disability, which
takes an important step in acknowledging that society
bears some responsibility for the barriers that people
with disabilities face. Also significant is the focus on
use of ICTs. 14 of the 32 articles deal with ICTs.
Some 114 countries have signed the convention since it
was introduced in March 2007 and the next step is for
these countries to ratify the convention, implementing
its articles in national legislation where necessary. In
the short term, most states will be looking at their own
legislation and comparing it with the Convention. Some
will have to introduce a lot of new legislation. Others
will be identifying any holes and taking steps to fill
the gaps.
The business of
knowledge, empowerment and national development.
by
Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola
Mr. President, Sir, Mr. Vice-President, Sir, Your
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Knowledge is the key to our survival, advancement and
salvation.
Technology, infrastructure and finance are extremely
important. But human experience demonstrates that it is
thinking based on true knowledge that positively
develops individuals, societies and mankind as a whole.
Economies grow as a part of this.
We need to create systems from synergies derived from a
triple helix of Government, Private Sector/ Industry and
Academic Institutions; linkages which would spur
innovation by empowering our citizens through knowledge.
Knowledge will allow them to translate their ideas into
productive goods and services.
Mr. President, Sir, May I suggest the following for
consideration?
Approval by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and
implementation of the existing draft COMMUNITY RADIO
(CR) POLICY.
a. Nigeria is a signatory to the African Charter on
Broadcasting. This defines Community Broadcasting as the
third tier of broadcasting. CR that is owned and
operated by and for a community and broadcasts in its
dialects is the “poor” persons’ Information
Communications Technology.
i. The basic low-end equipment for CR Stations with a
range of 15 to 30 km costs from N700,000 to N2,000,000.
This is exclusive of power, accommodation and overheads.
ii. CR can pass on knowledge useful to the daily lives
of the people much more effectively than GSM phones or
the use of cyber-cafes. Health and wellbeing,
agriculture and food security, justice and
accountability, national security and democratic
stability, business and the economy have all been shown
to improve through the knowledge gained and empowerment
achieved through CR.
iii. To date (Oct. 2007), Nigeria has issued only ten CR
licences and only the station at the University of Lagos
is operating. We can note that, as of July 2005,
Mozambique had 45, Senegal 14, Malawi 10, Ghana 8,
Namibia 6, Republic of Benin 5, Sierra Leone 4 and Sudan
had 4 functional CR stations.
iv. An excellent draft policy was developed in 2006.
This was deliberated on by the 37th National Council on
Information in Enugu in January/ February of this year.
To the best of our knowledge, all that remains is to
present the policy draft to the FEC for deliberation: we
add our recommendation for approval by the FEC.
Across much of Africa, including Nigeria, those who
teach are often not able to undertake sufficient
Research and Development (R&D). The reverse is also
true. We must better link research and teaching by:-
• Creating a Ministry of Higher Education and Research
so ALL Higher Education Institutions and Research
Institutes are directly and better linked with each
other and their efforts coordinated for effective
capacity building. The scope of the Ministry would
include:-
• Better funding for teachers/ lecturers with more space
and time to allow for an additional R&D workload.
• Empowerment of academia with innovation mechanisms and
encouragement of partnerships to generate funds through
fair and just Intellectual Property sharing with the
Private Sector.
• Government and Academic Institutions to spur
innovation to convert the knowledge acquired through R&D
into affordable, useful and sustainable products and
services for the people.
• Making it normal to involve students with R&D and
share findings with them to galvanise the youth and
stimulate the economy of the future through them.
• Creating a Ministry of Basic and Vocational Education.
Examples of this re-structuring are found in Ghana,
Malawi, Pakistan, the U.K. and Thailand.
Mr. President, Sir, we humbly pray that you and your
administration consider, endorse and adopt the above
suggestions. A “servant leader” will be considered
successful if the people can be empowered with knowledge
to sustainably improve themselves, those around them,
their own material circumstances and prepare better for
the future of those yet unborn and the environment they
will live within.
Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola prepared the above presentation for
President’s Yar Adua’s Business Breakfast meeting on
October 23, 2007.
It was however not presented.
Celtel establishes footprint in Ghana by
buying Westel, a national Operator for $120M
Celtel International, a subsidiary of Zain (formerly
named the MTC Group) has acquired 75% of Western
Telesystems Ltd (Westel) for USD 120 million leaving the
Government of Ghana with 25%.
Westel is the second national operator in Ghana with
license to provide fixed and mobile telecommunications
services.
Zain is on the trail of constructing a borderless
network which will offer its customers the opportunity
to move freely across geographical borders using the
same services they would access in their home country,
and to make calls without roaming surcharges and without
having to pay to receive incoming calls and messages.
Celtel says it now has footprint in 15 African countries
with over 24 million customers while the entire Zain
Group’s total operations now cover 22 networks
worldwide.
CyberschuulNews 258
Whazz
Up? WiMAX of Course!!
Investment in ICT infrastructure in Africa has improved
tremendously in recent years, $3.5billon in 2000,
$8billion in 2005, over $12billion in 2007 and we are
still counting. A significant portion of this is done in
Nigeria and it meant remarkable widening of access to
mobile services. Except that it is in mobile services
and especially in urban centres that the growth has been
recorded.
Hei, how do you access internet today? Dial up, WiFi or
Broadband? If you still use dial up, it is either you do
not have access to the others or the cost is threatening
your means. And that really is the problem of broadband.
High cost virtually everywhere in Africa, minus South
Africa, perhaps. Wi-fi of course has problem of
limitation of hotspots. Yes, several hotels, restaurants
and a few public places are investing to provide it on
‘me-too’ basis. Something just needs to go wrong and the
system goes down for some long time.
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, or
WiMAX for short, seems to be presenting another
leapfrogging chance for Africa. The engineering of how
it works makes that a possibility. Some other guys call
it IEEE 802.16, since it derived from IEEE
specifications intended for wireless metropolitan area
networks. The guys who called it ‘worldwide’ are
probably marketers, who, trust them, always play up with
words. They it was, who said GSM is ‘global’. Of course
it is not but it makes sense to refer to it as such.
Ditto for WiMAX. Interoperability, yes because that is
its joker really when we come down to the nitty-gritty
of its engineering. Microwave, yes, because it is
wireless and exploits the movement of electrons in
space.
While WiFi [also called IEEE 802.11 because it is IEEE
specification for wireless local area network], is
limited in most cases to only 30 - 100m, WiMAX can
provide broadband wireless access up to 50 km for fixed
stations, and 5 - 15 km for mobile stations. What does
that translate to in practical terms.
Another leapfrogging chance is presenting itself and
African Governments cannot afford to let go yet another
revolution in communications techniques. It will
challenge everything in us though; smart regulations,
robust capacity building, reordered education etc.
Voice-to-Text
Service debuts in South Africa
Africa’s first Voice messages via text went out on
commercial operation in Johannesburg last Monday. It was
launched by Vodacom which uses SpinVox UK’s technology.
The service had been in English, French, German, and
Spanish in several places in Europe and North America.
It is a platform on which smart business men may
eventually build value added services.
ATCON to attract
partners for NICOMM
Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria,
ATCON, may have entered into a for-the-future
arrangement with the Yankee Group – a multinational
event management outfit based in Boston, USA. The
company which may be at NICOMM2007, Muson centre, Lagos
October 22 - 24 on observer status this year may be
considered as partner for mounting future editions of
NICOMM if things go as planned.
Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem, President of ATCON, confirmed during
the week that the WiMAX Forum which will also be sending
delegates to participate in the next week’s EXPO will be
doing so in preparation for future relationship in the
organisation of NICOMM.
ITWeek Online goes on-line
An online news publication, known as ITWeek Online is
now routing at www.itweekonline.com
Biodun Durojaiye who announced its launch early in the
week says the e-magazine will have community features
such as forum, polls, classified ads, gallery, survey
tools, etc
ITWeek Online is the latest addition to several
successful efforts which Nigerians, especially news
writers, many of them continental award winners, have
placed on the web.
35 years after, cellphone inventors gathered for a
honour party
Although the first cellular phone service offering was
provided in Chicago, USA by Ameritech Mobile
Communications Inc in 1983, it actually used the
Motorola cellular portables whose initial design
commenced in the last quarter of 1972.
The design engineers were not working to a mass appeal
but towards what could be used by a select group of
businessmen who had the big bucks. It was actually a
survivalist’s instinct of Motorola which had to fight
the obsession of AT&T by asking its engineers to design
something portable and mobile. But that is not the news.
The news is that those engineers who started the
thinking in 1972 gathered together last week and were
treated to a honour party and talk show. And in Chicago
where they started it in ‘72.
A gentleman called Donald Linder led the team and he was
at the party. Now retired, Linder said it is amazing how
what they were conscripted to do had turned out to be a
global piece of fun and fancy. Commerce was not on their
mind but the mission to do it so AT & T’s monopoly could
be checkmated. It was eleven years after they commenced
work that it became a commercial product and it was
another ten years after the commercial launch that it
became a popular consumer product.
The engineers came out to be counted and stood tall in
the eyes of the world. The party was staged by
GlobalSpec Inc whose Chairman, Jeffrey Killeen, said the
feat was ‘extraordinary creativity’.
***Fuller story on the event and related issues in
future editions of CyberschuulNews.
CyberschuulNews 257
14 Trade Missions expected at NICOMM 2007
Latest information from ATCON secretariat in Lagos is
that not less than 14 trade missions have indicated
interest to participate in the forthcoming NICOMM
Exhibition and Conference holding from October 22 – 24
at MUSON Centre Lagos. Specifically on the list of
ATCON’s guests are trade groups from USA, Britain, Hong
Kong, China, India, Korea, Dubai, Taiwan, Canada,
France, Germany, Belgium, Malaysia, Egypt, and Lebanon.
Dr. Emanuel Ekuwem, President of ATCON says the
conference session would present investors’ experiences
on the way forward on topical industry issues such as
financing, power sector reforms, deployment of WImax,
and number portability.
ROUTING FOR OPEN SOURCE
CTO Pushes a global agenda
Why Open Source?
Open Source software presents an opportunity to cut
costs, to see inside the software, demystify technology
and understand the design so that all users can adapt
technology to meet their own needs. It is widely seen as
the key enabler for developing countries to achieve
technological self-determination. Open source can reduce
total cost of ownership, enhance security, and create a
vendor-independent network based on interoperability and
open standards. Open source software also provides the
opportunity to break free from the shackles of
proprietary systems and expensive upgrades. Those are
the things experts are saying.
The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, CTO,
has announced that it is hosting a three-day event in
December devoted to Open Source. The organization is
ensuring that several ICT giants, start-ups, ministers,
senior representatives from the public and private
sectors are there to analyse how open source is capable
of bridging the digital divide and how it is finding its
way into mobile systems.
Specifically, the One Laptop Per Child, OLPC project has
chosen Open Source; Several experts have given
presentations on how open source can work with existing
applications; They talk about several advantages which
open Source can offer that proprietary systems cannot;
and mobile operators are even harnessing open source to
deliver superior smart-phone features in inexpensive
handsets.
Seems that after HIV, the world’s attention may just
shift to Open Source.
ANALYSIS
Hallo, who is listening?
Last week, Ernest Ndukwe, Chief executive of Nigerian
Communications Commission, took the rostrum at the
Champion’s annual lecture in Lagos to review Nigeria’s
march to attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
His lecture gave a lot away about his perception of the
federal government and indeed of Nigerians understanding
of his annual call for major power sector reform which
although sounds too obvious for mentioning, appears to
be completely un-understood. Ndukwe, ever since he led
Nigeria into the telecom open sesame in 2000 has not
made an annual speech at any of the past 4 Nigerian
Telecom Summits without stressing the danger that poor
public power supply posed to the progress recordable in
telecom sector.
Listening to him with a third ear, it seems suggestive
that Ndukwe is saying that it may not be money that
reform in power sector seriously requires. We have heard
the expired government told us how much in several
billions of naira it invested in the power sector to
reform it. Result? President Yar Adua has declared war
[total hopefully] on the reform path. What does that
really mean? And that is the crux of the matter.
Ndukwe comes forth as someone who should know what he is
talking. For two reasons: One: P & T and later NITEL
serving as midwife, Nigeria sunk $5billion into telecom
development from 1960 to 1999. Nothing was there to show
for the investment. Secondly, in 2000, something
happened and Government stopped spending money in the
telecom sector. Not only did things change to look
upwards, the industry netted $10 billion in earnings in
six years and it is forecast that something more than
that may even come into in industry in the next five.
The issue now really is that if the projection will be
realized, it seems Ndukwe is saying something must
happen. And that thing should be in terms of ‘revised’
power sector reforms. Reform, for emphasis, may not just
mean throwing money into a problem and awarding
contracts to build generating stations and transmission
pylons, but in reordering the priorities and processes.
To date, two major things are known to have exemplified
the reform in the power sector, namely: Money spending
and name changing. That is if we take the establishment
of National Electric Power Regulatory Commission, NEPRC,
as a fundamental pillar of the on-going reform. That is
to say that the NEPRC is the agency to watch, not really
Aso Rock as Mr. President’s declared war may seem to
goad us.
MTN, CELTEL, head for the court
Two Mobile operators MTN and Celtel are known to have
quietly obtained a court injunction restraining NCC from
evoking sanction on them by preventing the 'Direction'
which the regulator warned it would issue if quality of
service did not improve in the month of October.
Late September, the NCC had warned each of the 3 Mobile
operators [MTN, Celtel and Globacom] that it would use
the observed key performance indicator of Traffic
Channel Congestion to apportion mandatory compensation
to their subscribers in the month of October. It warned
further that should the compensation apply, it must be
paid in terms of airtime credit to subscribers not later
than day 7 of the succeeding month.
Virtually all the operators have been announcing huge
investment figures for network expansion just as they
take every opportunity to draw attention to desirable
power sector reforms.
It is not unusual for service providers to resort to
legal arm twisting when they come face to face with the
wrath of governments, regulators, consumers or
money-lenders.
CyberschuulNews 256
Universal Licensees are now 13
Apart from NITEL and Globacom which are First and Second
National Operators, 13 other licensees that may provide
subscriber services nationwide have emerged according to
a recent announcement by the Nigerian Communications
Commission.
They include: Celtel Nigeria Ltd., Danjay Telecomms
Ltd., Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Ltd.,
Gamjitel Ltd., Gicell Wireless Ltd., Intercellular
Nigeria Plc, MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd.,
Multi–Links Telecommunications Ltd., Prest Cable &
Satellite TV Systems Ltd., Reliance Telecommunications
Ltd., Siotel Nigeria Ltd, Starcomms Ltd., and Visafone
Communications Ltd.
Among all of these, only three; NITEL, Globacom, and MTN
are known to have been building transmission backbone in
the past. Five are start-ups. Celtel while signing a
contract with Nokia Siemens Networks for construction of
4000km of nationwide fibre optic transmission
infrastructure last Monday said it will, by that
contract, be expanding existing routes to double the
network capacity by first quarter of 2008.
Siemens/Nokia Joint Venture
goes sour
Gets Celtel deal in Nigeria
Siemens indicated in Germany last weekend that it is
unhappy with the joint venture it went into with
Finland’s Nokia. The ‘absolutely unsatisfied’ verdict
did not indicate clearly however whether Siemens may be
routing for a withdrawal from the partnership. If it
would opt out of the venture which should normally run
till 2013, it needs Nokia’s consent, lest the penalty
clause comes into play.
Nigerian analysts had wondered all along how Nokia and
Siemens found a common bed to sleep on. Nokia in spite
of its early attempt to dive into the Nigerian market in
1987, several years before deregulation, with its state
of the art cellular system was unable to do business
with Nigerian officials. That was at a time when Siemens
was the best friends of the same technocrats.
When the Nokia Siemens Networks, NSN joint venture was
mooted mid 2006, investigation into Siemens activities
on issues which bordered on corruption and
under-the-table deals across the world had already
commenced. So the core objective of the alliance was
difficult to analyse. But it went through all the same
last April.
Why going burst so early? Nokia, unlike the Japanese,
Marubeni[switches], Fujikura[cables] who actually
withdrew from the market, refused to look away from
Nigeria until it eventually got a bite of the market
when 2G systems came to Nigeria in form of GSM networks
and Nokia terminals ranked unequalled in the reckoning
of consumers.
Meanwhile Celtel Nigeria has just signed a $130million
deal with NSN to construct 4000km of Nationwide Fibre
Optic backbone infrastructure.
CyberschuulNews.com to open
e-gallery
CyberschuulNews.com which publishes developmental
information on telecommunications has announced that it
will open a gallery on the web in January 2008 to house
a salad of factual information about Nigeria’s
telecommunications. The announcement indicates that over
400 technical and business papers, presentations,
reports, and government policy and intervention
documents are already assembled while it is envisaged
that another 200 may be vetted in the next few weeks.
When implemented, the archive will be updated daily and
would be available for access on free registration. The
objective is to avail students, researchers, investors
and historians information on actual record of what went
into development of telecommunications in Nigeria, post
deregulation. The e-gallery will complement
CyberschuulNews which reviews current events to forge
the overall vision of enhancing capacity building and
investment into the telecommunications industry.
Who takes sanction?
With the recent observation of slight improvement in
across-networks quality of service, the three mobile
operators in Nigeria may after all survive the threat of
sanction which the Nigerian Communications Commission
says it will evoke if poor service persists. Late
September, the NCC had warned each of the operators that
it would use the observed key performance indicator of
Traffic Channel Congestion to apportion mandatory
compensation to their subscribers in the month of
October. It warned further that should the compensation
apply, it must be paid in terms of airtime credit to
subscribers not later than day 7 of the succeeding
month.
Virtually all the operators have been announcing huge
investment figures for network expansion just as they
take every opportunity to draw attention to desirable
power sector reforms.
CyberschuulNews 255
New Mobile Virtual Network Operator
emerges in UK
The first mobile network, or even any network at all, to
be funded by Advertising may have emerged in the UK. It
is, in telecom parlance, a market driven Value-added
network.
Two gentlemen, Pekka Ala-Pietil and Antti hrling, told
the world last week that they had been conducting
research into user groups and live users to justify the
investment and they felt convinced that there is
business in an innovative, new media channel, providing
direct access to the 16-24 year old market; enabling
them to create awareness, build relationships and drive
sales to this hard to reach audience. They call the MVNO
Blyk.
Blyk is a mobile network for 16 to 24 year olds that is
funded by advertising. The network links young people
with brands they like and gives them free texts and
minutes every month. Blyk was founded in 2006 and has
offices in Helsinki, Finland and London, UK. The owners
say they hope to move into other European markets.
Highlight, Copy and Paste
3G NETWORK SYSTEMS:
THE CHOICE & CHALLENGE FOR NIGERIA
Ladies and gentlemen,
1st things first, let’s discuss why we are where we are.
We shall then recall some historical perspectives and
also mention a few personal experiences.
In 1995, the NCC commissioned a study under the title of
‘Study into [Prospects of] Cellular Mobile
Telecommunications Market in Nigeria’. The report of
that study led to various motion-without-movement
experiences between then and year 2000 when there was a
modification that turned out ‘a magic’.
In the early days of Mobile Systems, there was
fragmented market. Systems went by their proprietary
standards and generally cared less about
interoperability. There were: The American Standards,
The European Standards, and The Nordic Countries
Standards. Two notable realizations emerged:
One; that mobile systems thrive on economy of scale and
interoperability makes business sense and two; that even
poor countries could be viable markets.
Then emerged the ‘generational’ initiative as in
assigning vocabulary to each stage of mobile technology
development. Each generation represented an improvement
in spectrum capacity usage and ITU took advantage of the
global realisation and situated itself better to play
its natural role. It operated in a true belief that
business would be truly global and that regulators would
have less problems of incompatibility to deal with. The
initiative seemed good for all concerned. On top of
this, it was also realised that there is money to make
everywhere.
The First Generation of systems for mobile telephony was
analog, circuit switched, FDMA Access technology, and it
only carried voice traffic. The analog phones used in 1G
were less secure and prone to interference where the
signal is weak. Analog systems include AMPS [in the US],
NMT [ In Nordic Countries : East Europe, Asia and
Russsia ] and ETACS [in UK].
The Second Generation of mobile telephony systems, 2G,
uses digital encoding. 2G networks support high bit rate
voice, limited data communications and different levels
of encryption. 2G networks include GSM, D-AMPS (TDMA)
and CDMA. 2G networks can support SMS applications.
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a mobile data
service available to users of GSM mobile phones.
Although GSM is strictly a 2G standard, that GPRS is an
enhancement of it makes it code-named a 2.5G generation
of mobile phones. GPRS, which supports a wide range of
bandwidths, is an efficient use of limited bandwidth and
is particularly suited for sending and receiving small
bursts of data, such as e-mail and Web browsing, as well
as large volumes of data.
2.5G extends, an extension of if you like, 2G systems,
adding features such as packet-switched connection and
enhanced data rates. 2.5G networks include Enhanced Data
Rates for Global Evolution EDGE and GPRS. These networks
support WAP, MMS, SMS mobile games, search and
directory.
One of the major limitations of Second Generation
cellular communications systems is that data can only be
transferred after a connection has been established.
This is inefficient if only small amount of data is
transferred, and in situations where data is transferred
in bursts. 2.5G cellular systems allow a mobile station
to be "always-online" for sending and receiving packet
data. This allows efficient transfer of small amounts of
data, without the overhead of establishing a connection
for each transfer. It also efficiently supports bursty
data transfers, avoiding the need to allocate capacity
to a connection that cannot be reallocated by the
network if the connection chooses not to use it. The two
major forms of 2.5G enhancements to second-generation
cellular systems are the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)
and Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE).
The Next Generation Networks
The next generation networks (NGN) would support all
traffic demands. Specifically, it should deliver all the
following services:
A single network must converge voice, data and video
traffic, support mobility, have a very high speed
switching core, must be packet based technology and must
support value added services.
It is usual to refer to 3G systems as a Next Generation
Network System on account of the foregoing definition.
They can also be described as ITU’s IMT 2000 family
because it was in the year 2000 that there was unanimous
approval of the technical specifications for third
generation systems under the brand IMT-2000. The
spectrum between 400 MHz and 3 GHz is technically
suitable for the third generation. This approval meant
that for the first time, full interoperability and
inter-working of mobile systems could be achieved.
What specific advantages are envisaged?
IMT-2000 offers the capability of providing value-added
services and applications on the basis of a single
standard. The system envisages a platform for
distributing converged fixed, mobile, voice, data,
Internet and multimedia services. One of its key visions
is to provide seamless global roaming, enabling users to
move across borders while using the same number and
handset. IMT-2000 also aims to provide seamless delivery
of services, over a number of media (satellite, fixed,
name it…). It is expected that IMT-2000 will provide
higher transmission rates: a minimum speed of 2Mbit/s
for stationary or walking users, and 348 kbit/s in a
moving vehicle. Second-generation systems only provide
speeds ranging from 9.6 kbit/s to 28.8 kbit/s
To repeat, the often quoted major strengths of Third
Generation Mobile technology is its suitability for
voice, video and data services including video, video
conferencing and Internet access.
For equipment vendors and manufacturers, there is
universal agreement, a necessity really, that they will
be flexible, affordable, compatible with existing
systems and modular.
Why embrace 3G?
Considering that Nigerians have demonstrated a thirst
for Broadband internet access and that so far there is
still lack of broadband internet. Considering also that
Digital Subscriber Line, DSL is not known to have been
commonplace, NITEL went about it in a lackluster manner,
while I have no much literature on a few others that
claim to do it, there is a pressing need to fill the
gap. And 3G may just do that according to some
specialists. What is more, recent experiences show that
Nigerians create opportunities on emerging technologies.
Moreover, it is cheaper and quicker to roll-out 3G/WCDMA
than to run communication cables to every home.
With all the above arguments some have forecast that
high uptake of services in 3G is therefore expected if
launched. Who knows, these may have informed the embrace
of 3G by the industry regulator which is known to have
issued licenses to all existing mobile service
providers.
Wideband CDMA, also known as UMTS in Europe, is 3G
standard for GSM in Europe, Japan and the United States.
It's also the principal alternative being discussed in
Asia. It supports very high-speed multimedia services
such as full-motion video, Internet access and video
conferencing. It uses one 5 MHz channel for both voice
and data, offering data speeds up to 2 Mbps.
The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
A digital wireless technology that uses a spread
spectrum technique to scatter a radio signal across a
wide range of frequencies. CDMA is a 2G technology.
WCDMA, a 3G technology, is based on CDMA. CDMA has
multiple variants, including CDMA 1X, cdma2000, CDMA2000
1X, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and cdmaOne.
What is possible?
All e-advantages [ e-learning, e-business, e-sports etc]
Video Telephony, eMail, Location Services, instant
messaging, etc High Speed Internet Access and
Interactive Multimedia.
These do not come without challenges though. We should
expect challenges in the areas of Licensing,
infrastructure, and capacity building.
We must be conscious of some drawbacks such as the
reality that users have to make completely new
investment in 3G compliant terminals just as lack of
access of majority to the internet may limit
penetration. What about our public power condition!
Recommendations
It is hoped that the structure of 3G License fee so far
supports affordability going by the enthusiasm with
which the existing operators embraced their monopoly of
the licenses.
It is at this stage that the often repeated need to
review telecom engineering training syllabus in good
time to meet current challenges is apt. I say it again.
And 4G?
4G, though not within the scope of this presentation,
encourages architecture "openness". The services that 4G
can offer should be such that it can be developed by any
content vendor. The architecture is open as opposed to
proprietary in that it allows third party vendor to run
in the network. The 3G is not necessarily designed with
open Application Programming Interface (API). The API in
each network decided what developed services that can be
used by a network operator in the network. So, 4G is an
enhancement to 3G with open API for third party
applications (services) developments.
End of story.
Announcement
APPLE Warns
Apple says it has discovered that many of the
unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the
Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's
software, which will likely result in the modified
iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future
Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.
Apple has just released a new iPhone software update,
containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi
Music Store (www.itunes.com). Apple strongly discourages
users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on
their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications
to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone
software license agreement and void their warranty. The
permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing
unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone's
warranty.
CyberschuulNews 254
MTN’s after hours in Republic of Benin
Now that MTN has eaten a bitter pie in Republic of
Benin, it certainly will watch its back each time it
takes a step forward in other [African] countries since
such dictator’s-shock-treatment it received could be
applicable in other climes.
It’s like an ambush was laid for MTN come to think of
it. What really happened?
Benin's Telecommunications Regulation Authority (BTRA)
suspended MTN and Atlantique Telecom's Moov service on
July 9, on allegation that both companies had changed
their names without its permission. And to return to
service a new set of ‘new license fees’ was prescribed.
For starters, MTN acquired its Benin operation when it
bought Lebanon-based Investcom for $5.5 billion in 2006.
At take off of squabbles, MTN and Atlantique refused to
pay with MTN saying it was an illegal act as Benin
authorities were acting outside their own laws. Of
course the switches were off air and about 1million
subscribers of both operators went without phones. MTN
tried some subtle blackmail reminding government about
the peoples' discomfort from the shutdown. But with
President Thomas Boni Yayi, no dice.
Meanwhile two other mobile providers, Libercom and Bell
Benin had paid up. Of course they were obviously not the
target. Libercom is M-tel’s opposite in Benin Republic
since it is a subsidiary of Benin Telecom while Bell
Benin is privately owned.
Almost immediately, Nigeria’s Globacom was given a
license by BTRA to commence operation and several top
operatives of the firm were already in Benin for initial
implementation survey.
President Thabo Mbeki stepped in and high level talks
went in to save the neck of MTN.
8 weeks into the fracas, MTN capitulated by which time
it had been asked to pay a whopping $620million. It was
Benin telecoms authorities who said, last week, that the
MTN Group has accepted the conditions laid out in the
new fees structure. True?
What happens next? Is the sun setting at dawn for MTN at
its so-called strategic market? We wait and see.
What is bad is bad. What happened in Benin is an unfair
action which may be in waiting for other uses by which
time people would know it is an ugly side of
dictatorship. When such things happen to multinationals
which people grind axe with rightly or wrongly, it is
often passed for ‘one of those things’ until when it
happens to ‘a member of the family’.
Africa Telecom X-rayed
Intro
In a recent commissioned report, The International
Telecommunications Union, ITU appears not impressed by
progress of telecom development in developing economies
blaming the problem on inappropriate regulation. It,
however, identified four African countries [Nigeria,
Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania] which have done fairly well
with regard to adopting a technology neutral regime of
regulation. Considering that Africa is home to a large
number of developing economies, the report might as well
be painting the Africa picture.
In another breadth, the organization has hailed ICT
development in Africa saying it has built a new
generation of entrepreneurs, the booming of new
technologies, the design and implementation of new
business models and initiatives.
These are not conflicting positions come to think of it.
It is just that when you choose to look at a coin you
will see the side you are looking at. And if you choose
to look at a side at one time and report, then you may
be saying different things at different times. It is the
audience that needs to be careful on how it understands
the stories.
ICTs in Africa: a Continent on
the Move
ITU has just announced its sixth Regional Event for
Africa, ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008, to be held in Cairo,
Egypt, from 12-15 May 2008.
During ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2004, speakers and delegates
of the Forum noted that following the global
telecommunication and information and communication
technology (ICT) industry downturn of the late 1990’s,
the industry was rapidly recovering, thus providing a
new window of opportunity for the African continent.
Leaders who gathered at the event agreed that there was
a huge potential for growth in the ICT sector and that
emerging economies and developing countries now had the
potential to leapfrog the technology gap, thanks in
particular to the rapid deployment of wireless
communications.
Three years later, these predictions have been
confirmed, not only in the ICT sector but also in many
other aspects of the African economy. With a new
generation of entrepreneurs, the booming of new
technologies, the design and implementation of new
business models and initiatives, Africa is becoming a
competitive and exciting market, and in some cases, a
pioneer of new and far-reaching practices.
The adoption of a new ICT culture by the younger
generation has changed the way Africa is developing;
from its image, its cultural scene or its social
development, to its perception of the world and of its
own role in the future.
Such fundamental changes not only offer the opportunity
to develop new commercial approaches. They also
challenge the way policies are established, regulations
are developed and applied, and markets are governed to
ensure transparency and smooth development.
In view of the extraordinary wave of change on the
continent, the Forum at ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008 will
focus on innovation. The ITU TELECOM Forum Committee
will consider all proposals discussing really innovative
approaches in the fields of technology, regulation,
policy, business models, economy, finance, agriculture,
development, culture, health, life and society, up to
the changes and challenges witnessed on the African
continent.
Africa is basing its growth on a new generation of
entrepreneurs and leaders, waiving the traditional and
old-fashioned models.
ITU is saying that if you consider that you are up to
this challenge, you should submit a proposal to the
Forum Committee.
Cybreschuul/Cathybrite synergy
program hailed
Although at 28 participants, attendance at the August
24/25 session of the Cyberschuul/Cathybrite
re-orientation program was considered low, there was
consensus among participants that the concern of the
course designers is real and the content of training is
adequate. Some of the common problems namely:
fundamental problem of dysfunctional education, poor
understanding of industry requirements, bad curriculum
vitae presentation and abrasive application structure
which the workshop addressed made a good impact on those
who received the training. Not a few expressed amazement
at the incorrectness of the things they have always
done.
There was also a consensus that the program be extended
to more people. The Institute is therefore holding
another session on November 30 and December 1, 2007,
this time avoiding a clash with the Lagos State
environmental sanitation exercise as in the last date.
[Please see advert elsewhere on this bulletin and also
at www.cyberschuulnews.com ] at the same venue.
CyberschuulNews 253
Development in Technology:
‘e’ is fast transforming to ‘i’
It is amazing the way things are changing. Faster than
all predictions and by the time it has finished with us,
everybody’s name will become his/her phone number. Bet
you can’t wait for that to happen to you and I.
When we said ‘e’ we actually meant the application of
The Internet dressed in the magic word ‘electronic’.
Really it has gone beyond that and it is matching on.
When The Internet was first mentioned publicly in
Nigeria in 1995 what we said was that it was a purely
data phenomenon. We said it did not relate to voice. As
research eventually revealed, the VoIP, Voice over
Internet Protocol, was born. Then the IP telephony. Now
the iPhone. We expect the i-industry and ultimately the
i-society.
The issue really is that there is a world of difference
between VoIP and IP telephony. These two terms are used
frequently interchangeably but they are in fact
different. VoIP describes the actual method of
transmitting voice over an IP network while IP telephony
describes telephony devices that use IP as the native
transport for voice and call signaling. IP telephony
needs VoIP to send calls over the network but VoIP does
not need IP telephony.
IP telephony is what will change the ‘e’ to the ‘i’. It
has started with the iPod which really might just have
been a product name but certainly coined advisedly. Now
iPhone. Both are championed by Apple the world’s best in
this game. Amazingly, the iPhone which went on the shelf
on June 29 is reported to have sold I million units.
We have a price to pay though: a total review of our
development process starting with what we call
education.
Above is taken from a speech at Ijebu-Ode delivered by
Titi Omo-Ettu, a Lagos based telecom engineer
Convergence or Divergence?
Convergence is not about technology or even media. It is
a revolution on what society is and how it is
structured.
This is according to Matthew Buckland, GM of Mail &
Guardian Online, speaking during a debate on media
convergence, at the 11th Highway Africa conference, held
in Grahamstown, last week.
“Convergence represents a flattening of hierarchies,
which may have big implications for society,” he said,
citing revenue growth in the bloggersphere as an example
of new media developments.
According to Buckland, these concepts are being driven
by the changing attitudes of media consumers. “Readers
are no longer letter-writers, but media owners in their
own right and the challenge for convergence is to
understand this new class of intelligent reader.”
He added that it represents a new form of democracy
where the consumer is given a platform for reader
response and media creation.
Cellular inroads
The Internet has created many opportunities for media to
present information in new ways, and is one of the
drivers for convergence of media, said Arrie Rossouw,
editorial director of 24.com, during the debate.
“We can now cover all platforms of media, from TV to
book publishing, and place it online. Thanks to
digitisation, we can now mash up this content.”
He noted that to remain competitive, newspapers need to
start factoring in the cost of providing online, or
converged content. “If newspapers don't converge, they
will fall away.”
Rossouw added the cellphone is the most exciting
platform emerging as a medium of news dissemination. By
2010, the continent could expect 400 million mobile
handsets, 70% of which will be able to access online
content, he said. “That is exactly the kind of inroads
that this technology will make, which will allow us to
reach a whole new audience.”
Buckland agreed: “I foresee a time in the future when
cellphones will be so cheap that they will be given away
and connectivity will be so fast. A woman in a rural
area will be able to watch a video news insert on
cellphone regardless of literacy.”
Candice Jones, ITweb Journalist reported the above for
ITweb at
www.itweb.co.za
OPINION
The Beauty of Due Process in
Telecoms and IT Regulation
You can’t win all the time.
A time comes when the winning horse gets detoured, even
despised, sometimes by its owner.
That has been the burden of winners. Ask the guy with
the winning charm – Bill Clinton. When his charismatic
appeal seemed to have peaked in American and World
politics, some guys who could not stand his popularity
found a trap in Monica Lewinski trap. And trust, the guy
fell for it.
Back home, there was this gentleman corp, Fidelis
Oyakhilome who was first sent to Rivers State as
Military Governor. He proved outstanding and received
avalanche of accolades. His popularity took him to
another tough job – the drug czar as head of NDLEA. One
thing led to another and he came down with a bang!
Unlike Bill, he did not swim out.
What stood out on the administrative acumen of these two
case studies is that both guys are due process people,
who employed due process for a good measure. Sometimes,
some due process adherents bow out before their time. In
such cases, they go with their integrity untouched but
sometimes unfulfilled. Those who stick to it sometimes
run a huge risk in our clime but must withstand the
vagaries of hate and blackmail.
This is where a reference to the telecommunications
success in Nigeria becomes apt and is in many ways
attributable to the adherence of the Nigerian
Communications Commission to due process and rule of
law. And ironically it is also what has made those who
are crying ‘hark them down’ are twisting to push their
arguments.
But for those who have studied the NCC very closely, the
commission has entrenched a tradition – a tradition of
sticking to due process.
This is what some analysts have christened the
study-discuss-review-launch model of regulation. The
Commission, since inception, has stuck to four-stage
regulatory interventions. A careful analysis presents
the first stage as the study-the-subject stage where it
commissions consultants to closely study a subject after
which it uses the result of study to moderate a
stakeholders’ discussion. Thereafter it takes the
subject to the nitty-gritty review mill of its own in
house executives after which it launches when all
results indicate a positive move. With this, it has
earned industry partnership and participation and saved
itself, may just be all of us, from possible litigations
that would have tasked the Nigerian legal system beyond
its limits and our march necessarily punctuated. Of
course litigations have their ways of retarding
industrial march.
Come to think of it. Discount Strive Masiyiwa's effort,
you really can count on fingers the quantity of hardcore
litigations since deregulation. The few that were
commenced eventually got withdrawn. Believe it, due
process has its merits!
So, there many good sides to sticking to due process
including envy and hate. Sometimes they come inform of
undue radicalism. Yet, some are mere campaigns made to
suit patronage objectives. In many cases the proponents
have no business knowing the major differences in
Quality of Service, Interconnections, and Collocation.
But time is here to encourage the Commission to continue
on the good path of due process rather than succumb to
the tantrums of its detractors.
NEWS
MTC changes name to Zain:
Retains Celtel for African operations
MTC group which bought over Nigeria’s VMobile in 2006
and changed its name to Celtel announced recently that
it has changed its group Name to Zain but it will
continue to operate in Africa as Celtel. Maybe at least
for some time.
Apart from the master corporate brand which has been
changed to Zain, other MTC Group operations in the
Middle East and the Sudan have been rebranded as Zain.
MTC recently obtained a license to operate the third
Mobile telecommunications service in the Kingdom of
Suadi Arabia and it hopes to roll out early in 2008. Of
course operating as Zain.
M-tel gets shut down threat
It was the Nigerian Tribune which did the story and we
merely followed up on it. Tribune reported [September
19, 2007] that a top shot of Transcorp, one Partric
Okigbo who is in charge of its treasury threatened to
sack Mtel workers enmass if they kept pressing demand
for their unpaid wages. At a negotiating table where
Patrick lead the Transcorp Team to trade terms with the
Staff Union of Mtel workers, those who were at the
meeting said Patrick flared up when the demand for
unpaid salary and allowances was becoming irritating to
him and he told them his ‘conglomerate’ could lock up
the whole place for the next six months to give room for
the proper restructuring and “we would not lose anything
by taking such a step”.
It is not as if the speech or the speaker is any big
deal. But for a ‘conglomerate’ whose Group Managing
Director said specializes in buying over sick companies,
loosing one's temperament on such issues as we all know
what wages are takes a lot away from those who are smart
at getting a distressed company out of the sick bay.
What were they doing since the last six months when the
company was shut down?
Of course the chap was only boasting his way through but
his action shows what to expect from this
Transcorp-NITEL-Mtel thing.
The evil that men do lives after them.
CyberschuulNews 252
Improper telecom regulation is bane of
developing economies
Report says Information Society favours technology
neutrality in regulation.
Regulation, not technology or investment, is holding
back telecommunications development in countries that
are home to more than three-quarters of the world’s
population, according to a new report by the
International Telecommunication Union, ITU, released
last week. The report says this could threaten emergence
of a global information society.
According to the report, new telecommunications
technologies and the opportunities they bring are
available to developing countries at an unprecedented
level and even the investment funds are available to pay
for them. What is, however, all-too-often lacking is the
right regulatory framework to support development.
Developing countries that seem to have done well include
Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania. That may mean that
146 other developing countries may not have impressed
the authors of the report since 150 of the ITU’s 191
member states are classified as developing countries
with 50 of these classified as least developed countries
of the world.
The report is almost an updated review of what Sir
Maitland and his Committee pronounced in 1984 when their
report, The Missing Link, admonished developing
countries to liberalize and deregulate
telecommunications. It took several years before the
earliest of the developing countries embraced the
admonition.
Nigeria deregulated in 1993 and observed a technology
neutral regulatory regime in practice almost immediately
but only in year 2000 by pronouncement.
CyberschuulNews 251
MUBADALA gets operating Partner for Nigeria:
May roll out in 2008
United Arab Emirate’s Mubadala Development Company
may soon approach the Nigerian Communications Commission
with an operation plan for the issuance of an operating
license if it has not done so already. The Company which
earned a spectrum allocation on mono-selection directly
from the immediate past government in Nigeria is
believed to have signed an operating deal with Etisalat.
If the plan sails through, Mubadala operating as
Etisalat will be the fifth mobile service provider in
Nigeria and a strong fixed service provider as well
going by its huge investment of US$400million into the
license.
Mubadala may be divesting almost a third of its shares
to Nigerian investors in the long run. Analysts predict
that the entry of Mubadala may not pose any bellyaches
to the existing players the way Globacom came to change
the equations of the forerunners.
Convergence:
Even telephone subscriber identification numbers may
converge.
Nigeria appears set to take total advantage of
convergence, notable fallout of digital technology in
information systems, as it heads for a radical National
Numbering Plan. A workshop at which on going works
between the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC and
the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, would
be discussed has been slated for October 22 – 25 in
Abuja.
Number portability, a new industry lexicon, which is
said to mean that a telephone subscriber can move his
telephone identification number form one network to the
other. It may just be implemented before the year ends.
Its promoters, Nigeria’s regulatory authorities, claim
that a telephone user may move from one network provider
to the other without loosing its identification number.
WITFOR steps out
The IFIP World IT Forum (WITFOR) contributes to taking
the World Summit on the Information Society's (WSIS)
Plan of Action a step forward and into helping
developing countries to achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). WITFOR investigates
successful, sustainable ICT strategies in developing
countries and examines different initiatives and
projects on effective, context sensitive development and
use of ICT applications. This work is conducted in eight
thematic commissions and the result of this preparatory
work is presented as policies, initiatives and best
practices every second year in the WITFOR conference,
organized by the International Federation for
Information Processing (IFIP) in co-operation with its
member societies and local governments in developing
countries.
Industry consolidation:
Nigeria Telecom industry may be one to watch
Mergers, buy-overs and take-overs are current strategies
through which distress in telecommunications markets are
controlled. Analysts say while significant buy-overs
have taken place in recent times in the Nigerian market,
more may even be expected in the next few years.
One of the most successful buyoffs in Nigeria had been
the MTN and VGC Communications in which the former
staked close to US$65million for a 100% takeover. VGC
had been a solid company from day one and it made a
success of its fibre-optic backbone on which its fixed
wired services sit. Fine management and smart investment
decision in 2002, when it reengineered its network
bailed it out of early flight into technology induced
problem and the move paid off. It is one buy over in
which no job loss was recorded.
100 days of telecommunications under President
Yar’Adua
One hundred days down the road, four issues should form
the major focus of analysis, namely; the due process,
dwindling quality of service, challenging public power
supply and confronting politics’ major characteristics.
A unique characterization of the 100 days of
telecommunications under President Yar’Adua, is his bold
statement, if not an emphasis, on his seriousness with
due process. Due process has hallmarked the success of
the telecommunications industry in Nigeria in the past
few years, essentially arising from the posture of the
regulatory authority and not really from the direct
policy thrust of the central administration.
Unlike his predecessor who, early in his tenure, sacked
some Commissioners of NCC without explanations even
against the prescription of the law that set it up,
President Yar’Adua’s refusal to dance to the bodytalk of
his fellow politicians who traditionally see political
patronage as an art in governance regardless of what
harm they may do to the economy in the process, may be
an issue to watch. This has given a fillip to the
desired protection of the independence of the telecoms
regulator as envisaged in the Telecommunications Act
2003.
Proof! The President’s inauguration coincided with the
time when quality of mobile services had dipped
considerably. Subscribers were at daggers drawn with the
operators. It was, perhaps, the most challenging
experience of the Commission which had actually been
reading the riot act to the operators, albeit in slow
pace, ostensibly in observance of the stipulations of
the Telecoms Act. Just then some politicians capitalized
on the situation to cast aspersions on the Commission.
The operators appeared to have no quick fix solutions
beyond promises of expansion of their networks to reduce
congestion. One had expected the operators would concede
to re-ordering their attention to technical aspect of
their business in the manner they had paid attention to
their marketing activities. But they preferred to put
all the blame on poor public power supply and vandalism.
The new House of Representatives indeed set up an ad hoc
committee on quality of service, held various public
hearing sessions on the matter, and as it is
characteristic of politicians to chase solutions to
problems by travelling round the world, were reported to
have visited South Africa and Ghana with a view to
finding solution to Nigeria’s problems. No dice, so far.
The dust raised by quality of service was yet to settle
when another controversy arose with the refusal of the
Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd, bidding for a
last mile solution license by the NCC. It was a
controversy that set two Ministers – the Minister of
Information and Communications and that of Science and
Technology to work hours after they were sworn in by Mr.
President. The controversy came with a lot of
information and misinformation that are capable of
confusing even the most diligent President!
Perhaps, the situation provided a good opportunity for
President Yar’Adua to showcase his inert desire for due
process when he directed that NigComSat be privatized as
a first step. Under a charged telecoms environment such
as we have witnessed in the past 100 days, a new
President that is lacking in focus would have been
distracted by sentiments and comments of various brands
of interest in the matter. But the man remained calm and
took a decision that gave hope that he could be trusted
for a right decision. He was also bold enough to
discountenance an approval, apparently misrepresented,
purportedly given to NigComSat by his predecessor when
he saw that that action was lacking in due process. That
sublime act of saying and proving that he can live with
the rule of law has hit the right cords in the future of
telecommunications development in this administration.
The period under review is also eventful in income
generation with the auctioning of 3G spectrum in which
$450 Million was realized just before the regime assumed
office. Another N400 Million was raked in from Visa
Communications as fee from spectrum allocation. Under
the former dispensation, such funds were shared among
the Federal, State and Local Government administrations
as against logical projections that it would be used to
expand telecoms infrastructures in the country.
President Yar’Adua has remarkably been silent over how
these funds would be used. It is hoped he would also
depart from the style of his predecessor and apply these
funds for more proper use, especially in the current
plans to extend telecoms services to the rural locations
of the country.
Like many other aspects of the economy,
telecommunications was a marooned victim of the erratic
power situation in which there had been motion without
movement. Many telecom operators have found alibi in the
debilitating power supply situation to cover their poor
performance.
On assumption of office, President Yar’Adua actually
pledged a state of emergency on the power sector
although it may not be known yet what this means in real
terms. Nothing significant seems to have come out of the
Presidency that suggests solution is in sight. Since
power supply is intertwined with telecommunications
services delivery, there would be no kudos to Mr.
President yet on this score! In so far as the power
problem is not resolved, it would continue to haunt the
march in the telecoms sector.
Overall, the President has a record of good performance
in the telecommunications industry in his 100 days
largely for standing firm on due process and inspiring
confidence by protecting the independence of the
industry regulator, and sustaining the stability enjoyed
in the management of the nation’s telecoms industry.
In the next one hundred days, the President may just
have begun to ask questions on how Nigerians in rural
communities would be served and why his directive on
Nigcomsat should not apply to the other government
companies which are still purporting to be in commercial
telecommunications business. He may also be pushing for
the unfinished business of truly harmonising the
telecommunications and ICT sector which his predecessor
handled rather brashly.
Agreed. Nigerians forget very easily. It is however
doubtful if this rather pleasant takeoff has made them
to forget the jibiti manner in which the fine man came
to power.
CyberschuulNews 250
YAHOO GIVES E-MAIL TEXTING CAPABILITY
Yahoo Mail said on Monday that it thinks there's more to
life than just sending e-mail.
On Monday, Yahoo expands the Web mail service into a
social communication tool by adding the ability to send
text messages to cellphones directly from e-mail.
It has also tweaked the interface to make it easier for
people to go back and forth between e-mail, instant
messaging and text messaging.
Yahoo dominates the domestic Web mail market in the US,
with 83 million U.S. users in July, according to
researcher ComScore Media Metrix while CyberschuulNews
has 62% of its 35,331 subscribers as yahoo users.
OPINION
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NIGERIAN TELECOMS UNDER
YAR’ADUA
By
Reuben Muoka
This month, August, marks the sixth anniversary of the
acclaimed revolution in the Nigerian telecoms sector,
after some fifty years of pursuing the shadow during
which an estimated US$6 Billion was lost in the
management and mismanagement of the national career,
NITEL.
It was in August 2001 that mobile phone operators who
won licenses under the novel frequency spectrum auction
introduced by the Nigerian Communications Commission,
NCC, began commercial services. In six years, we are no
longer talking about GSM alone but an addition of
comprehensive array of telecoms and IT services,
products and services that include CDMA fixed and
wireless telephony, Broadband services, VOIP, ubiquitous
Internet Services, mobile Internet, huge fibre optics
and satellite transmission systems, online banking
services like Asynchronous Transfer Mode, ATM, and a
host of other value added services driven by
telecommunications.
Against this background, and in an attempt to be fair to
history, we must credit this success to the Nigeria’s
telecoms reformists, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe and his team,
at the NCC.
Leveraging FDI with transparency
The unpredictable yield of the transparent auction in
2001, when Nigeria had some 500,000 subscribers, is
today’s celebration of some 40 Million phone
subscribers, a record that puts Nigeria in the league of
the fastest growing telecoms economy of the world. This
super image is complemented by inflow of foreign direct
investment, FDI, of estimated $US10 Billion in the
sector within the past six years. Total investments in
the sector now stand at some US$20 Billion making
telecoms the darling business of any investor in
Nigeria. In terms of international relations, it must be
emphasized that the transparency that accompanied the
frequency auction in Nigeria, was the first item that
gave the Obasanjo administration the most tangible, if
not the most significant positive international image,
and also forced the attention of the global community to
an emerging democracy with a focus for economic reforms.
Advantage of due process and courage
Since 2001, NCC has implemented participatory and robust
regulatory strategies and undertaken courageous actions
and decisions, with unprecedented results that have
encouraged investors within and outside Nigeria to show
appreciation of the potentials of the sector. Today, the
NCC is rated alongside the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN,
and NAFDAC as agencies of government where the nation
can go to sleep in full confidence that positive and
courageous decisions are taken as appropriate, as and at
when due, and with successful results predictable.
Some have attributed the success rating of Engr Ndukwe
and his team to his business mindedness, and his
stickler dispositions to due process. The independence
offered the Commission by the Telecoms Act 2003, and
support from the focused and courageous Ahmed Joda-led
Board of Commissioners, have also contributed. This
ideal must have attracted President Yar’Adua who
recently directed the privatization of NigComsat as an
aftermath of NCC’s refusal to issue it license for
flouting due process.
Harvesting gains of efficiency and investor confidence
The NCC has so far exhibited appreciable dexterity in
wining the investor’s confidence. The recent acquisition
of 75 per cent of a local fixed wireless operator,
Multilinks Telecoms Ltd, for US$280 Million, by a global
player, Telkom South Africa, which has announced plans
to inject US$1 Billion into the company, adds to
demonstrate investor confidence in Nigeria. Apart from
huge revenues secured though transparent frequency
auctions, the mobile phone handset marketing is now
valued at some US$10 Billion.
In June 2007, frequencies for 3G services were won by
four operators, MTN, Celtel, Globacom and Alhieri
Engineering which paid US$150 Million each and in
January 2007, Mubadala, a United Arab Emirate company,
paid US$400 Million for GSM license slot, indicating
increasing investor value for the country.
Before 2001, Nigerian banks had nothing to do with
telecommunications and telecoms investment portfolios.
But since the regulatory environment opened a new vista
of business where transparency and stability are
assured, none of the banks now do without a telecoms
desk. Revenues from telecoms business can no longer be
ignored as the banks as also compete to introduce
telecoms driven products and services in Nigeria.
Suddenly, 40 million Nigerians have a choice. Even with
the critical quality of services issues threatening the
tranquillity of the sector, many Nigerians have not
allowed it to downplay or overshadow the overall gains
in the sector and the hope to resolve this temporal
problem with operators expanding their networks.
The NCC has made very significant contributions to the
national economic growth, with the provision of direct
and indirect employment since 2001.
Managing the tariff war
Tariff management is where the NCC has made a futuristic
inroad by targeting interconnect rates in driving the
prices down as against the popular and too simplistic
approach of dictating prices. This has led to the
current rates of N11.32K per minute uniform rates, down
from about N18.50K at inception. Consequently, operators
were forced to reduce prices from some N50 per minute at
launch of GSM in 2001 to about N19 per minute in some
service category in GSM networks, and N15 per minute in
CDMA networks. Another round of adjustment is expected
in 2008 and operators are braving for it.
The cost of SMS, which was N15 about 2001, has come to
some N5 per text while international call charges which
hovered at average N150 per minute in 2001 have come to
as cheap as N12 per minute in some CDMA networks.
A win for rural telecoms?
Perhaps, the greatest tool in the hands of government,
whish needs more encouragement is the ongoing
development-oriented citizen’s empowerment initiatives
by the Commission, like the Universal Service Provision
Fund, USPF, and Wire Nigeria (WIN) project. Both
projects are complementary while partnering the private
sector in taking telephony and IT-based services to
rural and underserved communities. The WIN project has
additional value in providing backbone
telecommunications infrastructure to the Nigerian rural
communities, to address the tasking quality of service
issues and ensure adequate communications between the
rural and urban communities. The current models applied
in the implementation of these two programmes appear to
be water tight with investors, who logically shy away
from investing in rural areas because of its slow and
low return on investments, accepting the carrots being
dangled by the NCC.
This is one area that would need a full focus because it
has unquantifiable multiplier effect, and it would do
this government a lot of good to lay a claim to the
profound turnaround of rural communications which these
projects would bring.
Conclusion
Applying a holistic view, it would be concluded that a
regulatory stability that provides robust backbone for
growth, an efficient management of the national scarce
resource called frequency spectrum, and a regulatory
process that have won the heart and confidence of
investors, are some of the crucial gifts that the
current NCC is bringing to the table of Yar’Adua’s
government. How the government manages and sustains
these gains would be subject of history in the future.
Reuben Muoka, former Deputy Communications Editor of
Vanguard Newspapers, is a Telecoms Analyst.
CALL ON POLITICIANS NOT TO REVERSE RECENT GAINS IN
TELECOMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA
by
Adeleke Adelaja
Something very exciting about some Nigerian politicians
is that they like to present themselves as patriots.
Regardless of what Nigerians know about many of them and
their antecedents, it is not uncommon for them to take
control of any situation and start sermonizing about
patriotism.
The guys in the lower House of National Assembly have
been playing theater with telecommunications in recent
times. The Speaker while she was signing off to go for a
holiday [they came in only on May 29 under a thoroughly
discredited election process and they consider
themselves already deserving of a holiday paid for by
the state] and a birthday bash here in United States of
America left words that the House Committee on
telecommunications should do no little battle with
telecom service providers because they have been
cheating Nigerians. They talk like ‘we are the
representatives of Nigerians and we cannot fold our arms
and let them be cheated by GSM Operators’. Good talk you
would say!
There is a fellow called Leo Ogo [or Ogor] who has been
speaking for an ad-hoc committee of the House on poor
telecommunications services. The fellow pushes an agenda
which either shows crass opportunism, and a display of
uncommon ignorance of the subject he is superintending
or he is just working blindly for a dirty project. He is
the kind of politician who has written laws about what
price Nigerians should pay for services and he is only
working towards crafting the 'theretofore' of putting
them together on air. Regrettably, he is low on
information.
They invited service providers to talk down on them in
the name of oversight functions and end up making
Nigerians laughing a stock in international discourse.
Chances are that very soon they will either confuse
themselves and everybody else or get settled by those
they pretend to be intimidating and abandon Nigerians
with their problems. If the Mobile operators turn round
to land free recharge cards on the laps of these singing
politicians, it would only just be a repeat of what
happened to those who were there in the last
dispensation. Remember?
Meanwhile the madam-speaker who set up the tough-talking
committee is in the news for refurbishing her official
residence with a scandalous N628million. Of course the
figures are being denied by her agents while the woman
has been keeping ‘babaically’ quiet. Perhaps she too,
like her friend, does not read Nigerian newspapers.
One agent of the lady said the figure in respect of the
official residence of the speaker could not be more than
N230million. Even at that in a country where secondary
schools do not have reagents in chemistry laboratories
for reason of lack of fund, it is amazing how those
folks think they will construct a Nigeria that can
produce future scientists if things go the way they
drive them.
Going by the way they are carrying on, chances are that
they destroy all the gains the country made in
telecommunications.
Adeleke Adelaja lives in Long Island
CyberschuulNews 247
Respite from NIGCOMSAT quibbles,
Thumbs up for President Yar’Adua
Good Decision! You would almost shout as the Yar’Adua’s
regime is proving daily by helping Nigerians recover
from the unpopular decisions of the previous regime.
The Yar’Adua directive approving immediate privatization
of NIGCOMSAT Ltd., as conveyed by the Information and
Communications Minister, Mr. John Odey, after
Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council Meeting, has put
paid to many quibbles. According to him, “The real
objective of launching Nigcomsat 1 is to open the sector
and later privatise it. Government has just directed the
Ministry to commence action through the BPE for its [Nigcomsat
Ltd.] privatisation. If it is privatised, thereafter,
the company can now request for license and they may be
granted to run other services. The privatization will
not leave government with majority shares.” [Vanguard
August 16, 2007]
That has brought to a close, the needless media war
which the guys in charge at Nigcomsat Ltd have engaged
with everybody, including its more focused and fearless
sister agency, on what would otherwise, have been a
laudable project of putting a satellite in space.
Let’s hope the bad press which NIGCOMSAT Ltd invited to
itself does not affect its belated privatisation. We
would hope that the BPE whose record of privatisation is
not exciting does this job with utmost dispatch and
sincerity and that NIGCOMSAT has not unduly swollen its
head as a government company as investors are wont to
shy away from government business, moreso one enmeshed
in controversy.
With the level of controversy generated by its immature
management, the least international investors would
require is that those who contrived this unnecessary
controversy at NIGCOMSAT to take an exit before they sit
down for serious discussions.
It will be a pleasant surprise if Nigeria comes clean
with some profit out of the good money spent on
Nigcomsat Ltd, or even the Nigcomsat-1 project as a
whole if global reaction to issues like this is anything
to go by.
It would not be the first of its kind though. Aerostat
Balloon Project, Trans-Nigeria Coaxial Cable
Transmission project, Rural Telephony Project, were but
only a few of several of similar major investments which
Nigeria has been railroaded in the deceptive search for
providing cheap service to rural populace. Things only
dived for the worse when strategic thinking in Nigeria
started going Chinese.
The latest adventure, the hollowness is so visible when
a government agency has to take newspaper advertorials,
in almost all the papers in the land, asking the public
to intervene in its business problems with another
government agency. Blasphemy!!
Nigcomsat guys said in their advertorial that it is
being opposed because “its full operation is rooted in
the fact that it is deploying state-of-the-art
facilities to offer world class services at cheaper
rates". It is good if they were mischievous but bad if
they are ignorant.
Just last week, Director General of South Africa’s
Department of Communications, Lyndall Shope-Mafole
announced that The NEPAD Broadband Infrastructure
Network (NBIN) will lay its own East African undersea
cable, despite two commercial ventures already on the
marks to go. That statement did not give consideration
to Nigcomsat’s existence. It dwelt on Fibre Optics, the
preferred system for transmission of this age. Put that
against Nigcomsat's 'business plan' of selling bandwidth
to 'other African countries'.
In East Africa, two commercial cables are being planned.
The East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) - is a
consortium of African and several international
telecommunications operators, including SA's Telkom and
the UK's BT. This cable should stretch for about 9 000km
along the coastline and connect every seaboard country
and is currently on the final stages of raising the
estimated $230 million it needs for construction and it
expects to be operational in late 2009, with an initial
capacity of 340GB. The Nepad Broadband Infrastructure
Network falls under the e-Africa Commission of the
African Union and consists of a terrestrial phase,
running from SA through Zimbabwe to Rwanda and,
possibly, an undersea system as well.
The second would stretch about 12,000km along the East
Coast and onto the Middle East and Europe , and has a
planned capacity of 1.2TB. It is being laid by the
Seacom private equity venture. Surveying for this cable
has started and its route will encompass SA and its
neighbouring countries. Seacom has not revealed details
of its capital raising, but The Blackstone Group, the
world's largest private equity firm, is behind the
project.
Here in West Africa, Globalstar, a
satellite company which has spent years on researching
the commercial potentials in Nigeria and West Africa has
already been on plans to take service into rural Nigeria
on commercial basis. Government agencies do not have a
record of such research and development strategies that
can deliver affordable services in the rural areas the
way those at Nigcomsat have been posturing. This is why
Nigcomsat have had a disastrous outing.
This is what happens when foreigners prop up politically
oriented civil servants, and present them as private
investor models. It is also for the same reason that no
less than six recommendations have been made for the
privatization of NIGCOMSAT by committees of experts, set
up by government itself, when it was discovered that it
was registered against good advice, but the same
government has been made to sit on those recommendations
until this crisis point.
At least, this would serve as a lesson to some other
government agencies who presume that they can simply
deceive the public by making impossible promises, go
ahead to waste our resources and go scot-free as ever.
It is thumps for President Yar’Adua. For
Yar’Adua to have shown that the ugly indecision and
abuse of due process of the past is gone, at least for
now is something to cheer.
CyberschuulNews 247
A SEARCH FOR DOMINANT OPERATORS COMMENCES
There is this saying in 'telecommunications communities'
that once the Dominant Operator is determined, all
problems are solved. Mischievous at best, incorrect of
course, it graphically captures the fact of a big relief
for those who settle dispute among operators and service
providers when hierarchy and dominance in the market
become either obvious or defined. That is why there had
been a persistent call on the telecom regulator in
Nigeria to determine and publish who Dominant Operators
are.
Now NCC came up on its website a few days ago to say
that it has set at a race to determine who dominant
operators are by hiring Consultants to conduct a study,
prescribe due definitions and state who is who. The
Commission also went ahead to invite submission from all
stakeholders on identifying specific markets and
instances of anti-competitive conducts.
A good race. One of the from-one-issue-to-the-other
types. If it were athletics, they would call it
relay-race.
EMERGING SOON: MVNO’s
Telecom Analysts call on NCC to license them
A discussion group, hosted by The Cyberschuul, on the
subject ‘Obasanjo years in telecommunications’
identified the need that the Nigerian Communications
Commission hopefully commences to license Mobile Virtual
Network Operators (MVNO) in due course if it has not
done so already, notwithstanding the ongoing impasse of
Mobile operators whose apparent lack of capacity to
contain their current network pressures has been on
show.
An MVNO is an operator providing mobile services to
customers through interconnection with and access to the
radio access network of a mobile operator. It is usual
for MVNO’s to compete at the same level as the service
provision arm of a mobile operator, but without their
own allocation of spectrum and their own radio access
networks.
Unlike mobile operators, MVNOs do not require assignment
of radio frequencies. There are therefore no
restrictions on the number of MVNO licences to be issued
due to spectrum availability. It is one of the several
win-win market strategies of telecommunications.
Opinion
iPhone: Game Changer?
by
Keith Willetts
After unprecedented hype and fanfare, the iPhone's
release in the U.S. really has caught the markets'
attention. It could have fallen on its face, but almost
a million people have so far paid upwards of $500 for
it. Are these customers flocking to the iPhone just to
take advantage of the underlying mobile network? Of
course not. In this very high-profile case, the phone
itself was the major driving force, and to be blunt, the
network was an afterthought. Clearly, Apple is using its
cachet to get potential carrier partners and customers
worked up.
So it should come as no surprise then to learn that
despite fairly severe restrictions imposed by Apple on
the carriers that will carry the iPhone, the providers
are still eager to sign up. It's well known that Apple
placed very rigid terms and conditions prior to signing
a deal for exclusive U.S. rights to the iPhone. For
example, they won't allow discounts on the phone, they
can't subsidize the cost of the phone, and they can't
create any bundled offerings involving the phone. This
is the first time that such stringent conditions have
ever been placed on a U.S. mobile operator. But it gets
even more interesting. In addition to imposing some
pretty hard commercial terms on its phones, it's been
widely reported by the mainstream business and
technology press around the world that Apple is also
demanding a cut of service provider's customer revenues
associated with the iPhone!
The cheapest iPhone service plan costs $65 a month, and
while we have no way of knowing what percentage Apple
may see, you can bet it adds up to a significant chunk
of change that could be heavily supplemented by
tie-revenues from mobile access to iTunes. It's a tough
deal for operators, no doubt, and they will have to make
up that loss of revenue—presumably banking on
significantly increasing volumes. That will probably
lead to coming up with clever ways of binding the iPhone
and its service even more tightly together.
While the iPhone sinks its claws into the U.S., reports
indicate that Canada and Europe are next up with
releases timed for the end of 2007. If the rumors are
true, and Apple is indeed demanding a slice of revenues
in addition to charging customers full price for the
handsets themselves, you can bet these conditions will
carry over to other parts of the world. And if service
providers balk at the terms, Apple can simply move onto
another provider.
taken from
http://www.telecommagazine.com/
SYNERGY:
CYBERSCHUUL AND CATHYBRITE JOIN FORCES TO BUILD CAPACITY
IN NIGERIANS.
The Cyberschuul, a Lagos based telecommunications
training Institute, has announced a synergy program
between it and Cathybrite Associates, a UK based
bodyshop consultancy which services select industries,
to improve available human resource capacity virtually
from cradle. Ms Cathy Omen Brite, ceo of Cathybrite
Associates told the build-up story to an audience in
Abuja. In her words ‘Sometime in 2006 we placed an
advert in CyberschuulNews which we knew had a wide
Nigerian audience to source for experts for our Nigerian
client. Few hours after the magazine went on the
internet we started receiving applications in torrents
and it was amazing how many people were asking for the
advertised positions. In one day we had received a few
hundreds of applications. Unfortunately almost all the
applications had not much content, irrelevant to our
needs, and generally poor in presentation. After reading
50 applications we stopped reading and decided we would
not go on again and we prevailed on the magazine to
withdraw the advert.
We later had useful discussion with the guys who were
behind the magazine and who in fact had been building
capacity and it was amazing the useful suggestions they
made in correcting the situation rather than running
away from it. Somehow people seem not to have learnt
what they should have learnt in school and some guy
somewhere has to do that. That is why we are pleased to
be a part of what has now emerged as a synergy and we
are trying our hands at making the best of it in spite
of all the difficulties. I agree with my friend ‘Titi’
who said “problems must be confronted, not avoided” I am
pleased to be part of this confrontation….’
The first session of molding the orientation of job
seekers who are keen on working in telecommunications,
oil and gas industries has been scheduled for the
University of Lagos campus on August 24 and 25.
Thereafter, they will be prepared to have a fine
industry focused mind and prepared to ask for job
placement with a high degree of confidence.
The Institute says it will host the workshop only in
Lagos. It however will be willing to consider brokers
who may want to host it at other locations by merely
hiring its services to deliver the content.
If it does, the institute will be re-living the story of
its forerunners who actually pioneered public awareness
training workshops on internet application in 1996 when
several of today's players in the industry were
sensitized on the subject matter at the same University
of Lagos venue.
MINISTERS ORDER FEUDING AGENCIES TO STOP MEDIA WAR.
NIGCOMSAT LTD MAY NOT GET AN OPERATING LICENSE AFTER
ALL.
There are indications that the Minister of Science and
Technology and his [her?] counterpart in the Ministry of
Information and Communications have met and instructed
Nigcomsat Ltd to stop further media campaign over its
disagreement with the Nigerian Communications
Commission. The Commission had refused to grant an
operating license to the government owned Nigcomsat Ltd
on the premise that such license would negate the
objective of privatization.
Chances are that the Ministers are justifiably worried
about the potential of such media war to bring up the
ugly deeds of a government which in spite of its
professed withdrawal from business kept on spending
wastefully in establishing companies that are outright
drain pipes on the nation’s resources. Rural telephony
project, Galaxy backbone, Nigcomsat Ltd are some of the
contraptions of the expired government which are
initiatives of Chinese investors dressed up as though
they were ideas to bring affordable telecommunications
services to Nigerians. And instead of the officials of
the agencies to sit down to resolve their differences,
they, very naively, took newspaper adverts to say what
is clearly a Chinese thinking written in Nigerian
English by Nigerians for Nigerians - 'Chin'ocracy' sort
of.
Meanwhile, Board of NCC [bydway of distinguished
materials] rose from a meeting mid last week to issue a
statement. It nailed the desire of Nigcomsat Ltd to
further its service provision objective and rejected,
with finality, the latter's application for an operating
license. It argued that the role of government is to
provide overall direction to telecommunications
development and ensure policy consistency. That role, it
says, does not include participating in the provision of
telecom services, and to deny Nigcomsat a license is
consistent with policy objectives as contained in
Chapter 2 Section 2.1 of National Telecommunications
Policy and premised on ensuring that government divests
interest in state owned entities and promotes
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