Akunyili calls for reduction in telephone tariff

Minister of Information and Communications, Prof Dora Akunyili, last week, made an appeal to telephone operators to reduce tariff which she said should have been better rated in Nigeria going by its market potentials. She made the call in an address she read to participants at the recent telecommunications industry stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja.  

The address has a populist bent and presents as one coming from the floor to the high table of industry managers. If the operators heard her, it will soon show.

Bad News: R-e-a-l B-a-d as
Nortel Files for Bankruptcy

World class Telecommunication equipment manufacturer, Nortel Networks, Canadian, has kissed dust. It became the first major telecom company to file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of current global recession. Nortel sources said via email last week that phone companies are reducing their orders and figures are going downwards so Nortel has to move fast.

Last Wednesday, Nortel went to Court to file bankruptcy papers just as it was making a debt payment of a little over $100million. With this offering a strategic protection from its creditors, the company, analysts say, may be hoping to restructure or sell off assets. Nortel posted a $3.4 billion loss in Quarter 3 of 2008, announced 1,300 layoffs in addition to freezing salary increases and reviewing its real estate portfolio.

Nortel, formerly Northern Electric Company, NEC which commenced business in 1895 has had a steady growth and assumed other names (e.g. Northern Telecom) under various restructuring until it became Nortel Networks. It has had 18 CEO’s in its 103 years of existence, a good record by any standard and the latest is Mike Zafirovski who on assumption of office in 2005 said “I'm convinced Nortel will be a big winner again. I do believe this is the opportune time to take the company to the next level.” 

Nortel did business with Nigeria's telephone monopoly, P&T, in the early 70's but the relationship went sour and the project was abandoned, revived, and later failed to meet the times. The vendor was unable to sustain smooth business relationship with the military rulers in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa because of behaviour which the laws of its home in Canada would not tolerate.

Case for the IT giants to respond to:
Apple, Google, Microsoft, sued for infringement

While CyberschuulNews was on holidays, Cygnus Systems, a relatively small company in Indiana, USA sued technology heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, Google claiming that a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened, is its own patent. It wants ‘reasonable royalty’ and a Court injunction restraining some vendors, just starting with those 3 giants maybe, from further infringement.

Who knows? Sometimes nuisance value could fetch some guys a few dollars, lest they keep the lawyers busy reading books.

Change of Guard at NASRDA

A former Director of National Remote Sensing Centre, Jos, Dr. Seidu Mohammed, has taken over the headship of National Space Research Development Agency, NASRDA from its pioneer Director General, Prof. Ajayi Boroffice who retired from service last December.  

Boroffice, believed to be a professor of biology became the DG of NARSDA when the Agency was established by a decision of Federal Executive Council of the Obasanjo regime in 1999. The Agency never got an Act of Parliament to establish it but has brokered heavy space science projects‌ even in its status of non-existence in law. 

No sensible Act of Parliament would have tolerated that a professor of biology would head a space research agency. Little wonder Nigeria's genial satellite had to be parked in orbit, ‘the same way as you park your car’, before it finally vanished. Sounds like cyberschuulnewsjoke eh!

Symbol of Nigeria’s youth excellence walks the aisle as
Gbenga Sesan weds in Lagos. 

Pioneer Nigeria’s IT Youth Ambassador, Mr. Gbenga Sesan, an engineer, took former Miss Temilade Agbaje, a doctorate student of architecture at the University of Nottingham, UK to the altar in Lagos yesterday January 17, 2009. 

Gbenga Sesan was investitured as Nigeria’s IT Youth Ambassador on January 17, 2002 in Lagos at the end of the Most Promising Web Developer Competition, MPWDC, in which he defeated 48 other contestants to clinch the crown. With the mandate, Gbenga walked the length of Nigeria responding to calls of his peers who requested to the mentored on IT applications using webpage development as tool. The Executive Cyberschuul which sponsored both the competition and his reign said at the Investiture ceremony that there was need to remind Nigerian youths that the assignment of taking the Nigerian system out of one in which mediocrity ruled belonged to them. 

At the final interview of his competition where Gbenga widened the margin between himself and his first runner-up, Gbenga had listed ‘any of’ Prof Wole Soyinka, Dr Philip Emeagwali and Dr Nelson Mandela ‘in that order’ as his choice of person who would hand over his Winner’s token cheque of N150,000 to him. He was responding to the interview panel’s question on the subject. The Executive Cyberschuul went in search of Prof Wole Soyinka who accepted on email contact to appear in Nigeria on any date chosen by the Institute for the Investiture. The Nobel Laureate did.

During his 2 years reign which expired in 2003, Gbenga, quoting from his final Report had delivered speeches to over 3000 Nigerian youths in Nigeria. He had also on account of ITU’s sponsorship taken the message to Africa having given speeches in several African countries. 

He was appointed a member of the United Nations Committee of eLeaders on Youth and ICT in 2006 

Gbenga Sesan handed over to Edward Popoola whose performance both at the 2003 edition of the Competition and also at taking the message to Nigerian youths, ‘beats Gbenga’s record silly’, to use the words of the Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Competition in 2005. The Competition was rested in 2005 when, according to the organizers, ‘the point it was meant to make had been made’. 

The idea of CyberschuulNews a publication which in its first outing on October 1 2001 was meant to announce the result of the competition actually came from Gbenga Sesan’s brain box when at his final interview he made the suggestion. The e-magazine has since then published 320 weekly editions resting for 4 weeks in every year and was suspended for 5 weeks at one time due to production problems. It emerged from the problem stronger and bigger and today circulates to more than 40,000 telecom/IT pros, executives and enthusiasts in all continents. 

Present at Temilade/Gbenga’s wedding were top IT professionals and a multitude of young Nigerians many of who are renown for excellence in their public carriage.

CYBERSCHUULNEWS 319

NEWSreview
Lagos State heads for Supreme Court to save its Mast/Towers Edict

The Lagos State Government which has, since the fortune of telecommunications started looking up in Nigeria, been in running battle with telecom operators over  construction of Masts and Towers is reported to have taken a further step to assert the enforcement of its Edict on the matter. The Lagos State Assembly passed a law ‘The Lagos State Infrastructure Maintenance and Regulatory Agency Law, 2004’ which both the High Court and Appeal Court have ruled  out of order insisting that telecommunications regulation is an exclusively federal government responsibility in the Constitution. Lagos State has always argued that it is protecting its environment by the law but Telecom operators say they find it offending. They claim it is unconstitutional, extortionist and draconic. Apart from the issue of jurisdiction, it is common joke within the telecom industry that Lagos State is merely using the argument of environment to make money as the practicability of the law is that whoever can pay the bill can destroy the environment.

NEWSAnalysis
Akunyili will do good to avoid lying

Nigerians who expressed  apprehension when they heard that the popular drug-warrior and courageous pharmacist, Prof Dora Akunyili, was brought to mainstream government to manage the central information and communication apparatus must have been right afterall. Since she assumed office she has lied twice and it is hoped she will not use her Tuesday 6th January’s interactive session with Telecommunications stakeholders to tell lies.

When, recently, she made what would probably have been her first public appearance as Minister by announcing the hand over of remnants of the failed Rural Telephony Project, RTP, to five telecommunication companies, she said the receiving companies are telephone operators. It is a lie. The Companies are not operators. Operators are telecommunication companies that operate systems that provide telephone services. The five they handed the project to are at best intending operators. They have not provided any telephone service, fixed or mobile, to anybody anywhere in the world. Yes, they might have been licensed to do so but they are yet to execute the licenses. She may use the opportunity of Tuesday 6th January to moderate herself so that Nigerians don’t start to say she has started lying.

The issue here is not whether the handing over of the project is good or bad but that those who were taking it over were not yet operators as at the date they took control.

She also lied at Igbere, Abia State, a few days ago where she talked to some apprehensive media practitioners from The Spectator when she told them ‘There is absolutely no cause for alarm. The situation is similar to when I was appointed DG, NAFDAC. I didn’t know anything about NAFDAC but I was willing to learn. And I learnt very fast on the Job’. That is a lie. NAFDAC was not the subject of her appointment at the time but DRUGS and its ADMINISTRATION. And we all know she knew about drugs. Drawing similarity between the two appointments is a roundabout way of lying.

With these two lies already in tow, the madam should better be advised to avoid lying lest she looses the war this time around.

It is expected that she will, on Tuesday January 6, 2009 at her interactive session with telecommunication stakeholders explain to the public where government stands on the unfinished business of industry restructuring of science, technology, information and communications apparatus of government; roadmap to achieving improved quality of service in the telephone system; and strategies for upgrading broadband access to Nigerians.

We recall that in 2006, Government commenced a desire to restructure the information and communications industries when it set up a Committee to examine the necessity for and wherewithal of a converged industry. Government, however, impulsively, announced the merger of the Ministries of Information and Communications ahead of the work of the Committee only to realise that restructuring in a true sense and as being canvassed by industry stakeholders was more than mere name-changing and merging of Ministerial portfolios. It is understood that the Committee completed its work and advised government on the amount of work required to effect a true change that would take advantage of the march of science and technology in the years ahead.

Work has since stalled on the project, or so it seems, and the Yar' Adua government, since take-over in 2007, has operated as if the issue never mattered.

It is time Mrs. Akunyili accounts for it, head or tail. It will be fatal for the Minister to lie on the matter or to pretend that it is a non-issue.

Proponents of a restructured industry argue that because of the radical changes that the internet and indeed Internet Protocol, IP, has offered, it shall, very soon, be contentious if not totally difficult to determine what is telecommunications, broadcasting, technologies or services and especially to distinguish between where one stops and the other commences. A clear view and smart industry management shall resolve this and enhance smooth industry management, reduce cost of doing business and therefore the cost of service provision to consumers. On the other hand, a continuous application of legacy systems and management of new systems using the old apparatus will create confusion, increase cost of doing business and ultimately impose severe cost on consumers. They argue further that it is time that the true difference between development of technology and application of technology be recognised and managed as such.

Those who are opposed to a change argue issues which surround who gains what and who looses what. They talk about persons when the argument is about issues. They use the words  'restructuring' and 'merging' as if the two are interchangeable and engage in political permutation when the issue on the table is technology application. They talk as if application of technology is what we should worry about while we leave its development for America and its first world peers to worry about.

These are usually enough to confuse a government that has no view of its own or ill-prepared to digest complex technical advice. It is not certain if government has not been confused on the issue. And if it is, the public deserves to know. We cannot continue to go on like this as if all the 140 million of us are sick.

Lying will not solve the problem but will either complicate it or postpone the evil day. And to sustain lies is to suppress the truth. Suppressing truth is like keeping calabash under water. One needs to remain there to keep suppressing it as it will come afloat the moment the liar goes away.

That was why the Third Term Agenda was born and we better not return to those days.
 

Akunyili to meet telecom stakeholders

Minister of Information and Communications, Prof Dora Akunyili, has invited stakeholders in the telecommunications sector to an interactive meeting on Tuesday January 6, 2009 at 11.00am in Abuja.

Chances are that the Minister will explain to the public where government stands on the unfinished business of industry restructuring within the technology, information and communications apparatus of government; roadmap to achieving improved quality of service in the telephone system; and strategies for upgrading broadband access to Nigerians.

Government in 2006 commenced a desire to restructure the science, technology, information and communications industries when it set up a Committee to examine the place and wherewithal of  a converged industry. It however impulsively went ahead to announce the Ministry of Information and Communications ahead of the work of the Committee only to realise that restructuring in a true sense was more than mere name-changing and merging of Ministerial portfolios. It is understood that the Committee completed its work and advised government on the amount of work required to effect a true change that will take advantage of the march of science and technology in the years ahead.

Work has since stalled on the project and the Yar' Adua government, since take-over in 2007, has operated as if the issue never mattered.

Proponents of a restructured industry argue that because of the radical changes that the internet and indeed Internet Protocol, IP has offered, it shall become  contentious, infact very difficult, to determine what is telecommunications, broadcasting, technologies or services and especially to distinguish between where one stops and the other commences. A clear view and sharp industry management shall resolve this and enhance smooth management, reduce cost of doing business and ultimately cost of service provision. On the other hand, a continuous application of legacy systems and management of new systems using the old methods will create confusion, increase cost of doing business and ultimately impose severe cost on consumers.

Those who are opposed to a change argue issues which surround who gains what and who losses what. They talk about persons when the argument is about issues. These are usually enough to confuse a government that has no view of its own.

A government's mandate is to resolve these issues or to quit if it lacks the interest or will to apply emerging technologies in governance. And that is why government cannot be allowed to do nothing. It should be strange if the Minister does not address these issues at the forum.

Nigeria’s first FTTH Network to emerge in 2009

21^st Century has been providing telecom service for close to ten years deploying fibre as back bone for its wired fixed telephone and internet services in Lagos.