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all about
the
Co-locationAgenda
Intro
Co-location is not a panacea to the problems facing the industry and should not be presented as such. It is one of many industry management tools that complement rather than substitutes existing infrastructure. Its importance is best served and understood in the context of an adherence rather than excessive reliance on fiat, legislation by industry players and managers who may have hitherto had a blasé attitude towards overall management and strategic planning.
The objective here is to draw the right measure of attention in anticipation that it will motivate industry players to embrace co-location as a operational concept and a focal point around which they coalesce to reduce costs, save investment and improve overall efficiency.
Extract from the Co-locationForum 2009
The essence and objective of co-location, is encapsulated by an extract from the Co-location Forum back in May 2009 which contends:
‘………..Consequently, it is considered that to encourage co-location of telecommunications facilities for regulated telecommunications services in Nigeria through principles and processes that are consistent with the purposes and provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act, including the promotion of competition for the long term benefit of end users of Telecommunications Services in Nigeria ….. ’
To achieve this objective, a set of implementation programs is imperative and it was identified. While networking to push the co-location agenda to the fore, equivalent attention, resources and effort must be paid simultaneously to the following critical areas of development:
- Revision of the National Information and Communications Technology Policy
- Restructuring of the industry to take account of converging technologies and consequently of the existing regulatory regime
- Setting a national broadband agenda with goals for accessibility, penetration and quality
- Capacity development in its totality, and
- An agenda to include industry consultation/intervention on energy (electricity)
Industry Plan of
Action is out.
Notice is hereby given to delegates to the Co-locationForum
2009 that delivery by courier of free personal
copies of the Report and Industry Plan of Action
on the proceedings of the above forum has now
been completed.
A copy of the report was delivered to every
delegate who provided a forwarding address and
also to Chief Executives of the industry players
they represented at the Forum. Agencies of
Governments, Trade Associations, Foreign
Embassies, and Public Libraries also received
copies. Only a few were returned undelivered.
The scope and validity of the industry players'
data focusing on industry networking and
reproduced in the report was collated from what
was provided at the Forum on May 19, 2009
including updates and information that were
researched later.
Telecom Answers Associates is already
facilitating implementation of the major issues
of the forum at various levels.
The ‘Access’
question in Africa’s Telecommunications
by
Ernest Ndukwe
One of the main limitations
we have to faster deployment of internet in the continent is the
access challenge. Access is fundamental. Without access there is
no internet. Internet is not real and cannot be experienced,
used or valued by the individual who does not have access.
Access for me means being
connected to the internet at the right speed and at the right
price and linked to the right content at the right time and the
right place.
In discussing the Access
question, I will restrict my intervention to the enabling
infrastructure especially with respect to regional and national
backbones as well as security and safety issues.
Many developing countries
lost out on the telecom revolution that happened before the
advent of mobile communications, when the rest of the world
developed copious installed capacities for fixed line
transmission and last-meter cable infrastructure. With the
coming of internet, the cable infrastructure became the access
infrastructure in those more developed countries for linking
homes and offices to the internet employing ADSL technology.
Thus for many developing countries today, mass market last-meter
access to the internet has to be wireless.
It is also important that
last meter access is developed side by side with national and
regional backbone infrastructure to ensure affordable bandwidth
cost and interconnection/peering. Regulators and governments
have a responsibility to encourage investment in the building of
large capacity optic fibre infrastructure within the nations and
across the region.
I recently launched a
campaign for what I termed “Fibre Without Borders.” This
followed the realization that some countries in Africa delay or
deny rights of way for cross border or cross country OFC
infrastructure projects. Some countries even deny landing rights
to companies seeking to land sub-marine cables on their shores.
These are serious policy and regulatory issues that must be
addressed. Africa today needs optic fibre highways crisscrossing
the continent. This no doubt will help aggregate African data
traffic, reduce cost of access, increase regional transit
footprints, encourage regional peering, facilitate development
of local content and enhance the contribution of Africa to the
knowledge resource in the World Wide Web.
On the issue of security of
access, I wish to discuss the need for international Cable
landing points redundancies and their protection as critical
national infrastructure.
Recently in Nigeria we had a
major cable cut of the link to the Sat 3 submarine cable
infrastructure. This affected voice and data traffic to and
from the outside world. Although this was an inadvertent and
unplanned cable cut, it nevertheless disrupted critical business
processes and social interactions. This brought home the
realization that a planned sabotage of unprotected critical
communications infrastructure, whether State or privately owned
can have far reaching consequences on the business and social
life of a country and could grind certain critical activities to
a halt and can escalate to disaster proportions.
There is therefore need for
regulators and policy makers to encourage the build out of
redundancies and diversity in the provision of critical
infrastructure and this may include satellite communications
alternatives, even where cable transmission access are
available.
This is important to ensure
that when connected we can always remain connected.
Communications networks and services remain critical life-wire
for existence in the 21st Century.
Excerpted from a lecture
delivered by Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, Executive Vice Chairman of NCC
at the November 2009 Edition of NITTA Awards in Lagos.
Nigeria National Broadband Strategy
Project Initiated
The Nigeria ICT Forum, with support of the Nigerian
Network Operators’ Group and the Association
of Progressive Communications, has convened
a group of ICT professionals, Librarians and
Civil Society representatives under the name
of Nigeria National Broadband Strategy
Project Committee, to plan a stakeholder
forum to facilitate the development of a
National Broadband Framework for Nigeria.
Representing a diverse array of Nigeria’s
communications providers, government
institutions, national regulators,
infrastructure providers, consumer groups,
public interest groups, educators, content
creators, and other stakeholders in
Nigeria’s broadband future, the forum will
deliberate on a framework for a national
broadband strategy.
Committee Coordinator John Dada (Program
Director of the Fantsuam Foundation)
recently proposed a 9-point agenda which
revolves around preparing a draft National
Broadband Framework which will be presented
for discussion at the forum scheduled for
Abuja very shortly.
About the Nigeria ICT Forum
An initiative of Nigerian Research and
Education Institutions, the Nigeria ICT
Forum of Partnership Institutions (ng ICT
Forum) is a platform that aims to develop
the internal capacity of Nigerian higher
education institutions to collaborate in the
cultivation of a favourable policy
environment, as well as the development,
utilization, sustenance and advancement of
their own ICT networks, services and shared
resources, consistent with their proper role
as foci for development. For more
information, visit www.forum.org.ng
About the Nigerian Network Operators’
Group
Hosted by the ng ICT Forum, the Nigerian
Network Operators’ Group is a forum for
cooperation and the exchange of technical
information between operators of
Internet-connected networks in Nigeria.
For
more information please visit http://forum.org.ng/ngnog/about
About the Association of Progressive
Communications
A global network of civil society
organisations whose mission is to empower
and support organisations, social movements
and individuals in and through the use of
information and communication technologies
to build strategic communities and
initiatives for the purpose of making
meaningful contributions to equitable human
development, social justice, participatory
political processes and environmental
sustainability.”
Learn more about APC at
www.apc.org
For information: http://bb4ng.forum.org.ng
Contact: Omo Oaiya e-mail:
bb4ng@forum.org.ng Phone:
09-8746732
Time to define
‘Broadband’?
Telecom industry sector players in a few markets are
known to have been asking their regulators to come
forward with proper definition for broadband
internet access by defining a minimum speed to
ensure that internet network providers comply and
extend the same level of service to all areas,
especially rural.
It is known that while the requirement (for strict
definition) has been taken for granted, regulators
are not finding it easy making such definition in
policy documents.
The truth is that broadband is a broadly used term
and the speed at which a network connection is
deemed to be broadband has different interpretations
in different places.
ITU (International Telecommunications Union) defines
broadband as a speed of between 1.5 megabits and 2
megabits per second (Mbps). Some have used 2Mbps as
the minimum while some say anything above 512Kbps
can ride on the word.
The consequence is that service providers use the
word loosely in their promotional materials and it
does not matter until provider-customer relationship
runs into turbulent weather and ends up in
litigation.
Industry
Review
Cybercriminals still on the offensive
Automated cyber attacks set up by criminal
organisations persist unabated leaving no business
immune to data theft.
There remains a misplaced assumption among
businesses that if they adopted a risk-based
approach i.e. that if their risk profile is low,
they are unlikely to be targeted. James Lyne, senior
technologist at security firm Sophos, at an IT
Security Conference in London hosted by IDC – a
global provider of market intelligence, advisory
services, and events for the ICT markets - said in
no uncertain terms ‘this is not true because an
increasing number of automated attacks target any
business they can, irrespective of the company
profile.’
In his speech, he talked of ‘invisible attacks’ such
as those carried out using PDF documents that are
used and trusted by most businesses and the use of
automated search engines to look for vulnerabilities
in web applications means that no business can bank
on being overlooked.
Cybercriminality, in its current guise, involves an
increasing number of legitimate websites exploited
to carry out attacks using SQL-injection, which is
also invisible to end-users.
Recently Yahoo had to block its jobsite – Yahoo
Careers - vulnerability after hackers took aim and
attempt to steal personal information from websites
according to says security firm Imperva. The
vulnerability of businesses and the permeable nature
of their responses were highlighted by Amichai
Shulman, Chief Technology Officer at Imperva who
said the attack ‘is despite the fact that this form
of attack has been around for 10 years and can be
easily avoided.’
Imperva researchers recently warned Yahoo that the
vulnerability of its jobsite was under discussion in
hacker forums and how it might be exploited to
access information on the website's database.
Shulman, supposedly shooting from the hip, said
hackers do not create vulnerabilities, they merely
exploit vulnerabilities that are put in the coding
of applications used by websites to process
information.
Yahoo responded within hours to block the
vulnerability by using more secure code for handling
data in the web application.
In this case, the hackers were offering only a means
of accessing the database, said Shulman, without any
evidence that the site's database had been
compromised.
Last month, similar vulnerabilities were exposed at
the Guardian Jobs website which had been targeted by
a sophisticated and deliberate hack, consequently
breaching the security of the data on the site.
Subscribers who had used the site to make one or
more job applications were informed that their
personal data, relating to those applications, may
have been accessed.
In the UK and in a completely separate but relevant
incident it was revealed that staff at mobile phone
company T-Mobile passed on millions of records from
thousands of customers to third party brokers.
Details emerged after the firm alerted the
information commissioner, Christopher Graham, who
said his office was preparing a prosecution.
A T-Mobile spokesman said the data had been sold
"without our knowledge".
Global Review
Kigali - Still setting the pace
A month after the announcement of a mammoth
collaboration between telecoms players in East
Africa of the initialization of a large scale Wi-Fi
network deployment in the city Kigali Rwanda, a
major Wiltshire town is to become the first in the
UK to offer free public wireless internet access to
its entire population, it was claimed.
Back in September it was announced that in the first
phase of the project, about 100 WBS-2400 base
stations are being installed on MTN Rwanda cellular
sites and roof- tops, and will jointly cover the
city of Kigali providing high-speed wireless
connectivity for medium and small businesses as well
as residences in Kigali – population 603,000.
In Wiltshire this week, Swindon Borough Council
announced plans for all 186,000 citizens to have
blanket "Wi-Fi mesh" coverage by April 2010.
Subscribers to the service - to be called Signal -
will have limited access but could pay for 20Mb
upgrades.
This fee would be "significantly less" than current
broadband suppliers, scheme bosses estimate. The £1m
project will be run by Digital City UK Ltd, in which
Swindon Borough Council has a 35% share. Some 1,400
secure access points will be fitted around Swindon,
similar to those used in homes but with a much
higher performance.
If successful, there is an intention of working on
similar roll-outs of the technology in other towns
and cities across the UK.
Swindon Borough Council leader Rod Bluh said: "This
is a truly ground-breaking partnership which will
have real benefits for everyone living in Swindon.
"We're doing it, we've done it, and we're the first
to do it."
In Kigali Waivon Ltd.- a company transforming the
urban rural Wi-Fi market with a new category of base
stations alongside Balton Uganda Ltd – a system
integrator operating in both Uganda and Rwanda and
MTN Rwanda – a leading cellular operator in Rwanda
are combining to bring about this mammoth project
Last month Eran Kaplan, EVP of Sales and Marketing
said "We are proud to be selected by MTN Rwanda for
their first large scale metro Wi-Fi deployment. Our
superior performance in terms of range and indoors
penetration is a key enabler to cost effective
city-wide deployments. Our cooperation with Balton
Uganda will ensure the customer with a complete and
successful turnkey project and ongoing support."
In the realm of ICT, it would appear that where
Kigali takes the lead, Swindon follows and there are
not many other sectors where one can say that.
Call for an
ICT University?
A call may soon go out for
the establishment of an ICT University if
the discussion of delegates to the
National Stakeholders Workshop on
‘Development of Framework, Standards and
Guidelines in Information Technology’ in
Lagos, eventually gets a ratification.
Delegates reviewed the IT sector and
unanimously clamoured for severe
improvement in the operations of NITDA.
Google goes 'voice'
By buying over Gizmo5, an online phone company
midweek, Google may have signaled intention to
become a phone company with prospect of doing cheap
calls for its customers. There comes a challenge
which should make legal pundits in major American
phone companies to start brainstorming on how to
give the new entrant a stud.
Digital
Divide closing, Broadband Divide widening’
A new revelation came from the United Nations during
the week when Under-Secretary-General for
Communications and Public Information, Kiyo Akasaka,
told the fourth World Electronic Media Forum in
Mexico City, that while it is observed that the
mobile phone has actually bridged the gap between
the rich and developing economies, the truth really
is that broadband access, a stimulant for economic
growth of today, is still widening between the two
divides. Using his exact words:
"A person in a developed country is on average 200
times more likely than someone in a least developed
country to enjoy high-speed access to the Internet.
….In the case of Internet use, more than half of the
developed world population is now online, compared
to only 15 per cent in developing countries”.
NEWSreview
Wanted: Management, not combat in restructuring the
information and communications technology, ICT,
industry
by
titi omo-ettu
A news item, early in the week, said the Minister of
Information and Communications pledged to recommend
the merger of the Nigerian Communications
Commission, NCC, and the National Broadcasting
Commission, NBC before the end of the year. Using
THIS DAY’s version as guide, the story is that the
Minister of information and communications
The whole report has been presented as if what the
Minister said is a fresh reaction to an identified
problem namely that “ though frictions between the
two agencies had led to calls for the two to be
merged, the merger could only be done through a
legislative process and not through fiat’.
The impression is at best misleading originating
either from the Minister’s presentation or of
newspaper reportage. One important reason there is
need to take communication with public as an
important business of government is to handle
delivery of government decision in a manner that
leaves no room to incorrect interpretations of
government intensions or decisions by the public. It
is an irony in this particular case.
The story also alluded to the call by Mr. Nduka
Obaigbena Publisher of THIS DAY newspapers a few
says ago for the merger of NCC and NBC and it might
just look as if it was that call of Mr. Obaigbena
that government was reacting to in effecting the
merger.
For starters, we have argued relentlessly in the
past five years when the matter of restructuring of
the ICT industry became loud that the matter of
restructuring has a few fall-outs one of which would
be the unification of regulatory regime for the ICT
industry. To present it as a merger of NCC and NBC (
infact some would mischievously say it was a merger
of NBC ‘with’ NCC). Some would even say it was a
scrapping of NBC and strengthening of NCC both
position which would be dead wrong and against the
spirit of driving the industry forward.
The compelling consequence of emerging technologies
is the need to reorder how the industry is managed
so that our citizens can take full advantage of its
benefits. If not properly structured we stand to
find us investing much to get so little and our
citizens would implied bear the brunt of such
mismanagement. We use the very good example of how
some operators have been able to provide
international calls for N12.00 per minute while they
offer local calls for N20.00 per minute?
Why is that?
The reason is that the technologies they rely on use
different strengths at the different levels.
The other issue we have always stressed is that
restructuring must be holistic, transparent
reasonable and focused and it should be devoid of
talking about personalities when the issues are the
main focus.
That the industry is regulated unitarily is
different from saying two agencies are merging or
worse that one agency is to be consumed by another.
That leaves us with solving a problem and creating
another, the one being altruistic, the other being
frivolous.
The first mentioning of the need for restructuring
was in 2005 and it emerged from the consequences of
emerging technologies. It has nothing to do with
agencies quarrelling with each other and the two
agencies under consideration here did not at any
time allow the possible overlap of their functions
to generate any bad feelings. It was when some folks
who wanted to entertain the public started talking
about merging NCC and NBC that bad blood became
pronounced and human being since they are not
computers started talking camps and polarizing the
discussion.
In 2007 the regime of President Obasanjo went ahead
to pronounce the merge of the ministries of
information and communications apparently in
ignorance of the amount of work required to make a
holistic restructuring. The committee the government
constituted to do the preliminary work eventually
came up with comprehensive plans which the
government probably found too engaging to embark on
within the little time it had to live. It then left
the implementation for the incoming government which
since it cam in 2007May has not shown direction.
If such good plan is what government is intending to
implement at this time it cannot be presented as a
merger of NBC and NCC. Just as it will be mindless
to think that the only thing government will do is
to merge the two agencies. That will mean nothing
beyond creating new management problems for the
future of the industry.
titi omo-ettu is a Lagos based telecommunications
Consultant
Akunyili to Propose NCC, NBC Merger
by
Efem Nkanga, THIS DAY
11.09.2009
Information and Communications Minister Dora
Akunyili has said the ministry will make
recommendations to the Federal Executive Council
(FEC) on the call for the merger of the Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) and Nigerian
Broadcasting Commission (NBC) before the end of
December. Akunyili, who stated this over the weekend
in Lagos in an interactive session with journalists,
said the merger of the NCC and NBC would guard
against functions overlapping.
She expressed the belief that though frictions
between the two agencies had led to calls for the
two to be merged, the merger could only be done
through a legislative process and not through fiat.
NCC and NBC are the two main regulatory agencies in
broadcast and telecoms but function overlap occurs
in the area of licencing of spectrums. Some had
called for a merger to ensure that the
communications industry has a single regulatory body
as obtainable in other parts of the world.
On his part, Chairman/Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY
Newspaper, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, last week questioned
the relevance of NBC as a regulator in an age where
technology has created a borderless world.
Obaigbena was delivering a lecture to participants
at the Executive Intelligence Management Course at
the Institute for Security Studies in Abuja. He
called for the merging of NBC with NCC because,
according to him, NBC has lost its relevance because
of nature of modern news media.
The duty of NBC is to regulate and license
broadcasting stations but with advent of the
Internet, voice and video can be transmitted from
anywhere in the world, thereby rendering NBC
irrelevant. A merger with the NCC, he advised, would
be more appropriate for management, including
frequency and spectrum allocations. "Technology has
changed the media. I wonder what the role of the NBC
is anymore since all videos and voice can be
delivered online. Then what are they regulating or
licensing? NBC’s time is gone. What we need is
merging it with the NCC so that together they can
properly manage frequencies," he said.
On the proposed sale of the Nigerian
Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), Akunyili
stated that though NITEL had been a disappointment,
like many other national projects such as Nigeria
Airways, government is doing something to bring
something good out of the organisation. She said
with NITEL valued at over $600 million, Nigeria
would try and get as much value as it could out of
the company. Describing NITEL as a big national
resource, the government, according to her, does not
joke with the organisation and is threading
carefully with the issue.
On the status of the 2.3GHz spectrum sale, Akunyili
said NCC was working towards a repeat licensing
process of the spectrum as ordered by President
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. She said 21 days notice would
be given when the time for the licensing process to
commence begins.
On the re-branding project, Akunyili said the
National Re-branding Project is a systematic
response to address the country’s image problem.
The re-branding initiative, according to her, draws
heavily from the internal components of the previous
image project, “Heart of Africa,” and is conceived
as an internal process to address Nigeria’s negative
image.
She said it is designed to be people-centred through
the paradigm shift- PPPP – Private, Public and
People Partnership.
Disclosing that plans had been put in place to set
up rebranding clubs in schools across the country,
Akunyili stated that the campaign is a holistic one
and homegrown geared at bringing about attitudinal
change, re-orientation, reviving cultural values and
instilling a renewed spirit of patriotism and hope
in all Nigerians.
Market Review
Up there, Who is dominating who?
by
Abi Bilesanmi
In business, particularly in the cut-throat
competitive world of technology, players are
hankering to reach the top but how far is it from
the bottom? The answer is no one really knows. Only
that if you are at the top, apart from it being
lonely (so they say), the one thing that is
guaranteed is that your competitors want your crown
– possibly with your head attached to it.
It has been a turbulent year for those at the top of
the tree. Take Nokia for example. Despite being the
world's biggest maker of mobile phones, controlling
more than 50.5% (Oct 2009 figures) of the handset
manufacturers market, its dominance has been shaken.
It has largely been a turbulent year for the mobile
phone giant some of which had been self-inflicted.
Earlier in the year it was hit by an economic
boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the
post-election protest movement begin targeting a
string of companies deemed to be collaborating with
the regime with reports that demand for Nokia
handsets fell by as much as half in the wake of
calls to boycott.
The market has offered no respite as Nokia's profit
margin for its handset division has been shrinking
in the global economic downturn of 2009. Nokia is
struggling to hang on to its leading position in
smart phones as competition increases from
BlackBerry and Droid. Nokia lost 6 points of
smart-phone market share in the third quarter as it
posted its first-ever quarterly loss. This slump
could not be clearer to Nokia as it is being
unseated in handset profitability by Apple to become
the most profitable handset vendor for the first
time on the strength of its popular iPhone.
According to analysts Apple’s third-quarter
operating profit from iPhone sales was estimated at
$1.6 billion, in comparison with Nokia’s operating
profit of $1.1 billion from its handset unit.
In a similar (and parallel) universe, Microsoft who
controls 92.5% of the US PC market is also feeling
the heat from Apple who controls just 6.6% of the
market. In reasonable circles, one will say
Microsoft is being paranoid by giving this
‘perceived threat’ any credence. After all it has
not long released the much-anticipated Windows 7
which by most accounts is the best version of its
operating system in a decade. However MS should be
nervous especially after its poorly reviewed last
operating system Vista which meant that many people
with the eight year old XP. Apple can smell this
nervousness and plans to poke fun at Microsoft’s
‘cack- handed’ upgrade for XP owners where they have
to back up their files to an external drive,
reformat their PC and then reinstall all their old
programmes. Apple is waiting to pounce on Windows
7’s burdensome characteristic. Senior VP for
marketing Phillip Schilling says ‘Any user that
reads all those steps is going to freak out. If you
have to go through all that, why not just buy a
Mac?’
With global handset sales set to rise yet again in
2010, the question is whether other mobile
manufacturers succeed in their bid to tighten the
gap with Nokia and increase their success within the
handset replacement market and as Microsoft
continues to waste time and resources figuring out
how to win a sideline game it has already
lost--Internet media--their shareholders have bigger
things to worry about namely, the future of the
NokiaN900 and Windows 7 respectively. It has been so
long since Nokia and Microsoft had anything real to
worry about in these businesses that it is easy to
take their perpetual domination for granted. Well
don't.
Thumbs Up for BarcampAfrica 2009
More than 150 delegates attended this weekend’s
BarcampAfrica 2009 event at Vodafone Headquarters in
London. The big Vodafone sponsorship apart, the
organisers also received sponsorship from Betavine,
a site where you can explore all things mobile —
including a new site area devoted to mobile
solutions in the developing world; the Social
Exchange that helps people solve challenges in the
developing world using mobile technology.
Keynote Speaker, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, CEO of The
Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO)
addressed the means by which the international
community can help bridge the digital divide and
achieve social and economic development, by
delivering to developing countries unique
knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of
Information and Communication Technologies.
CyberschuulNews presented an interpolation of its
Publisher’s recent dissertation on ‘Politics and the
reality of telephone subscription in emerging
markets’ which appraises the perspectives,
successes, challenges of mobile telephony in
emerging markets with particular reference to
Africa.
Other presentations cover a multitude of
developmental topics including ‘Improving
Transparency in Public Sector Operations’,
‘Management Culture and Business’, ‘Securing
Africa’s new broadband for development’
It was one big Africa event which network potential
is publicly endorsed by many delegates. One said
"You could just feel the buzz of enthusiasm. People
really want to work together for change."
The event leader Richard Tandoh expressed his
delight and appreciation with the diligence and
professionalism of the conference organisers and
reiterated the increasingly important role of
attendees to push on further on issues themes
discussed.
Nigeria:
Co-location and sharing of telecom infrastructure up
to a fine start
Telecom Answers Associates which hosted the
Colocation forum on May 2009 in Lagos released a
statement during the week that all the 225 delegates
and 121 corporate organisations which they
represented would receive the Report and
Implementation Plan of the forum in the coming week.
Rashidat Adebayo who spoke for the firm said
implementation of the main decisions of the forum
was already in progress and was remarkably up to a
fine start and positive reaction of all those
concerned with the process. She said the report was
also on its way to all implementation agencies of
government, trade associations, foreign embassies
and research institutes. It will also be available
on newsstands to cater for the interest of all those
who may want to use the strategic industry
information contained in the report for investment
in the ICT industry.
HURRAY! The internet is 40
It was in 1969 that the first computers which linked
themselves in the manner that kept transforming
until it became what is the internet today were
actually born.
Professor Leonard Kleinrock who led the team at the
time celebrated the day 29th October last week in
California.
Fine words on the celebration went out from Tajudeen
Ejalonibu, Chairman, Publicity, Events & Trade
Committee Nigeria Computer Society who congratulates
Prof Kleinrock and his colleagues. He expressed the
hope that the psyche of those who only loot, ride
hummer cars with scant regard for technology would
change, now that Nigeria’s judiciary is setting a
pace in hunting the looters of society.
WITSA champions coordinated global ICT Policy
The Bermuda meeting of World Information Technology
and Services Alliance, WITSA, which ended this
weekend has made a declaration which focus on
raising public and institutional awareness and
attention to the benefits of a coordinated global
ICT policy. It also sets to stimulate increased ICT
investment, projects, and opportunities and
re-commit WITSA to the continued global promotion
and development of ICT solutions.
News came in early in the week that Information
Technology Association of Nigeria, ITAN, has secured
the hosting right for the Regional Headquarters of
WITSA in Africa. Its President, Dr. Jimson Olufuye
was also elected into the Board of the WITSA at the
ongoing summit in Bermuda. The meeting will end at
weekend.
Internet
facilities for Nigeria’s secondary schools
The Universal Service Provision FUND, USPF, said
during the week that 474 schools, spread across the
six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, have so far
benefitted from complete set of Internet tools and
facilities provided under the FUND’s School Access
Programme. The USPF is also known to have
established Community Communications Centers, CCC,
and subsidized Base Station Transceivers, as part of
its mandate to achieve national and grassroots
connectivity.
The most recently commissioned schools which got the
facilities early this week are in Katsina and Kaduna
states.
Chairman of Senate Committee on Communications
Senator, Sylvester Anyanwu who was present at the
commissioning in the school in Kaduna said “The 21st
Century is technology driven and any student whether
in nursery secondary or tertiary institution without
access to computers and Internet, or do not have the
skills to use these facilities would consider him or
herself illiterate in the next five years”,
Number Portability takes a new turn
Vodafone Ghana’s officials recently stirred up the
hornets nest as they pushed for immediate
implementation of Mobile Number Portability in spite
of the obvious cautious approach which Ghana’s
National Telecommunications Authority has favoured.
The authority is looking at a 2011 implementation
date. On top of that another Vodafone official, Eric
Valentine, mouthed a statement that CDMA deployers
would not be able to port GSM numbers and vice versa
because of the difference in technology. That was
the aspect that set nerves loose as a Kasapa Telecom
official told anybody who cared to listen that Eric
Valentine was dead wrong. Apparently Eric has not
known about the truism that in engineering, nothing
is impossible even if cross-porting porting GSM/CDMA
numbers was not his kettle of tea, he needed to be
more circumspect. More operators are now accepting
the reality of Number Portability and they are now
saying all would be well to introduce Mobile Number
portability in Ghana any time.
Kasapa Telecom is the only CDMA network in the Ghana
competing with five other GSM operators - Glo
Mobile, MTN, Tigo, Vodafone, and Zain.
CyberschuulNews goes fully commercial.
April 21, 2010
is the date publishers of CyberschuulNews have set
as launch date for commercial services at a public
event in Lagos. A recent release by the publishers
to its subscribers says a new world of opportunities
would emerge from the stable of the e-publications.
The document reads thus:
News, Views, Reviews and Analysis.
We will continue
to provide industry news when you want – as you want it based on
well grounded and sourced research; by professionals, experts,
and investors and from other
reputable publications.
Technology & Industry Review
Your on-line magazine about global technological innovation,
invention and application accompanied by online articles on
specific technologies and a focus on the process by which new technology gets
out of the lab and into your homes and businesses as well as
reviews by current industry players and for prospective industry
players and consumers
Training & Job Opportunities
We are committed to providing a trans disciplinary networked
learning community devoted to excellence in learning
both conceptually and as expressed in
innovative practice and development in
the pursuit of excellence for and by:
-
students
-
jobseekers
-
communities of IT practice
-
academia.
Conferences and Industry Events
We will continue to cover intra and international events,
symposiums and communiqués that promote the industry in its
broadest sense, recognizing its multifaceted and interdependent
nature, ensuring the integrity, completeness and inclusiveness
of the ICT environment at large, and supporting the emergence
and evolution of other dynamic sectors.
Regulation
The
industry needs an adequate regulatory framework. To this end we
will persevere with our analytical look at regulation with the
aim of promoting an efficient, orderly and fair
telecommunications industry where all stakeholders get a fair
deal. We will look at issues such as:
·
Access to information about Regulation
·
Licensing Processes
·
Cabling services
·
Collocation and infrastructure sharing
·
Repair and maintenance of telecommunication facilities
·
Consultation guidelines of broadband deployment
Data
We are a leading
provider of industry data. Our market knowledge is backed by
years of acquiring valuable commercial information in the
installation of ICT business solutions as well as extensive
experience at the sharp end of telecommunications engineering as
a basis of providing project management tools and technical
support. Such data will include:
·
Industry Subscriber data
·
Players and their market share
·
Private investment trend
·
Weblinks
To domestic and international newspapers’
magazines, journals and other websites.
NEWS
ISPON
GETS NEW EXCO
The Institute
of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, ISPON, at its
AGM held in Lagos midweek elected a new leadership.
The new Executive Council is made up of:
-
Chris Uwaje
President
-
John Tani
Obaro 1st Vice-President
-
Pius Okigbo
Jr . 2nd Vince-President
-
Chinneye
Mba-Uzoukwu Gen. Secretary.
-
Adeyinka
Oyewumi Asst Gen Secretary
-
Salisu
Afolabi Treasurer
ISPON is the
apex body of computer and related services industry
in the software-driven IT industry in Nigeria. It
was formed in 1999 with the primary objective of
being a catalyst for the growth of the
software-driven IT industry. It was specifically set
up to facilitate business and trade in software and
related services and to encourage the advancement of
research in software technology.
The new
executive is a team of very highly rated
professionals of the software industry.
NEWSreview
ZAIN hands its operation maintenance to Nokia
Siemens Networks:
A challenge for Regulation?
Zain in Nigeria
has again announced that it signed a deal with Nokia
Siemens Networks late October to handle its
operation for reason of ‘maintaining network
availability across Nigeria’ a disguised way of
saying the company has problem managing its network
and got a bailout from NSN.
In June 2009,
Zain made public what it termed an agreement the
first of its kind on the African continent, when it
teamed-up with Ericsson, a leading technology
vendor. The deal then was to make Ericsson
responsible for managing most of the network and
field operations for Zain’s wireless networks and
operational support systems, serving almost 4,000
sites across Nigeria. Also as part of the agreement,
about 450 employees were to be transferred from Zain
Nigeria to Ericsson under their existing terms and
conditions of service, where they would undergo
further development in the latest wireless
technologies.
Apparently a
u-turn has now made the reality of a deal with Nokia
Siemens which, shortly after June, was reported to
have been signed into a commitment to deliver 'high
standards of service' to Nigerian consumers. The
agreement covers full network management, operations
and maintenance.
What puzzles
industry watchers is how operators repeatedly
conclude deals with equipment vendors whenever
management of their systems goes into stress. It
confounds when it is vendors that operators run to
when maintenance go awry. Some times such deals are
even signed with Consultants whose tuff is not
network management either.
In developing
economies, questions are not asked who bears the
brunt of the consequences of those decisions and
confusions. Of course consumers and local employees
take the bashing. That makes the subject an
interesting issue for African regulators to look
more closely into these whitewashed stories of
endless search for bailout when moneybags dig into
telecom investments in circumstances where their
technical competence is ab initio
suspect.
Feature
Forget Orange, the future is Red
For reasons of Communist propaganda
(by this is meant distorted western kind rather than
the Communist Party propaganda), China has long been
treated unfairly in international trade for its
non-market economy country (NMC) status, despite its
WTO accession back in 2001. As a matter of fact,
China has already established a market economy
system after over 20 years of reforms and
opening-up. The distortion stems from the fact that
China has followed its own template of a market
economy and strictly adhered to its own pace of
development.
As a result China, it will appear, is forever having
to prove its market economy status but the reality
is that according to a report entitled Report
on the Development of China's Market Economy 2003,
as far back as 2001 China
was about 69 percent a market economy measured by
the internationally accepted standard, exceeding 60
percent which is the accepted threshold.
For those who question the
objectivity of this report and dismiss as more
evidence of Communist propaganda, we can at least
agree that access to
production; fair trade and consumption are
major criteria of a market economy status.
On October 1, the iPhone3G went on
sale through Apple retail outlets, China Unicom's
stores and other retailers in China for about 5,000
Yuan ($733). It is unclear whether that price was
for the 16-GB iPhone, the 32-GB iPhone.
The move gave China Unicom exclusive
rights to the iPhone in China and an advantage, for
the moment, over rival China Mobile Ltd, which is
China's largest wireless carrier and also said to be
in talks with Apple to carry iPhone. This represents
further evidence to the propagandists who
incessantly go on about the need for competition
(often while they enjoy monopoly power) to be
introduced, that it is alive and kicking in the
Chinese telecoms industry. China Unicom’s move to
sell iPhones, analysts say would limit sales to
high-end buyers and force most of them to sign a
contract with the carrier and in all probability
ended O2's iPhone exclusivity later this year in the
U.K. The tail has wagged the dog –if you wish
According to market economy
advocates, choice is another indicator of a market
economy. Propagandists say the Chinese consumers
(like its electorate) lack choice. But the iPhone
3Gs has eight different service plans to choose
from, and include 120 to 880 SMS messages, 15 to
95MMS messages, 450MB to 4GB of mobile data and 320
to 3,000 minutes of talk time.
Despite 3G service launch, China
Unicom is offering a Samsung phone on Google's
Android platform that will be available starting in
December, and that further 3G phones are expected in
2010.
Apple is courting China because
having ironed out a
three-year agreement with China Unicom - the
country's No. 2 carrier which about 140 million
subscribers - to sell the iPhone, the upside is
immense.
Wall Street analysts say
Apple will sell somewhere between
five and seven million iPhones in China in 2010
as a result of this deal.
Brian Marshall, an analyst with
Broadpoint AmTech says the devil of the Apple’s
windfall with China Unicom is in the detail. He
estimates that only about half of its subscribers
are pre-paid customers, which is not the market that
Apple is going after, but China Unicom has about 70
million post-paid customers -- the kind that Apple
wants - while China Mobile has approximately 92
million post-paid customers.
Another factor was that China Unicom
has been aggressively building its 3G network, a
necessity for the iPhone. China Unicom's 3G network,
the only one of the three state-sanctioned carriers
that is compatible with the iPhone, will be in place
by the end of the year, according to company's
chairman and CEO, Chang Xiaobing, during a news
conference in September.
Marshall says ‘With 70 million
post-paid customers, and assuming flat sales, which
are conservative, I think Apple will sell between
five and seven million iPhones in China during
2010," said Marshall. He projects that Apple will
sell 37 million iPhones worldwide in 2010.
"That means China will account for
15-20% of all iPhone sales next year," said
Marshall, rounding up the actual numbers of
13.5-18.9% generated by his math.
That is a whole lot of cream – which
ever way we look at it and the
big winners are Apple and iPhone customers. The fact
that Apple –an iconic brand is putting it weight
behind selling its iconic device - the iPhone - in
the world’s largest market tells us the balance of
consumer power has shifted. The future is not
orange, its signal red.
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