Nokia flags off E7 Smartphone sales in Nigeria

Nokia E7

By Prince Osuagwu

World leading Smart phone makers, Nokia, at the weekend, officially unveiled its latest smartphone, the Nokia E7 into the Nigerian market. The colourful ceremony which held at the Four points Sheraton Hotels Lekki Lagos, officially marks the flag-off of commercial sales of the product in Nigerian markets.
General manager of Nokia West Africa, James Rutherfoord who declared the event open, noted that Nokia  deliberately primed the E7  to redefine the smartphone market in Nigeria.
With its tilting 4 inch Clear Black display, full keyboard and a fast access to a wide variety of apps directly on the homescreen, Mr Rutherfoord said the Nokia E7 is the key to having a successful day in or out of the office. According to him, the device supports business applications from leading enterprise technology partners including Microsoft and IBM. 
He said Nokia E7 gives users the confidence to bring their own smartphones to the workplace to connect securely to corporate messaging servers, irrespective of their status. According to him,  "whether you are an artist, entrepreneur, university student or aspiring world traveller, the Nokia E7 is the only smartphone you will need to get the world’s best mobile navigation and mapping application, thousands of apps, millions of music, and a rich messaging experience.”
For business users, he said the Nokia E7 provides direct, secure and real-time access to email, calendar, contacts, tasks and the corporate directory through Microsoft Exchange servers. The same, he said, was the case with Office Communicator Mobile, developed by Microsoft for Nokia smartphones, which brings presence and corporate instant messaging.
Meanwhile, a wide range of entertainment and social services available on the Nokia E7, added to why Rutherfoord said its the perfect off-duty companion, even as the Ovi Store offers a wealth of apps such as Bloomberg, Angry Birds and Sports Tracker.
The new arrival offers drive or walk navigation in 80 countries. The latest commercial version of Ovi Maps, available immediately via Ovi Store or Ovi Suite, adds visibility to subways, trams and trains, real-time traffic, safety alerts, visibility to parking and petrol stations, speed limit warnings, and improved search and location sharing capabilities.
To convince his audience that the product was an all-in-one business smartphone, Rutherfoord seven rare features that distinguishes the product from other. According to him, the Nokia E7 makes easy access to private and business email; Creates, edits and shares office documents and view PDF files with Adobe Reader; enables fast, secure intranet access with the built-in VPN; supports high-resolution photos and HD video with the 8 megapixel camera and dual LED flash; turns HDMI connectivity to project files, videos and images onto large screens; has 16 gigabytes of on-board flash memory and supports USB-On-The-Go, enabling easy file sharing.

PARTNER ADVANTAGE PROGRAMME: MainOne weaves broadband last-mile benefits around telecom operators

Broadband

By Prince Osuagwu
Internet freaks in Nigeria who may be hoping for a direct business deal with frontline broadband access providers in Nigeria, Main One cable company, to enhance their broadband end use experience, may at the moment, still have to rely on the company’s resellers including major telecom operators and other ISPs.
This is as the company has reiterated its position not to go into retails even in the near future. In fact, the company revealed that going retail, was not even in its business strategy for now.
However, the good news is that not going retail for the company, does not mean that it would not monitor whether its broadband investment, rubs off positively on end users or employ strategies to create desired impact if expectant teeming Nigerians are not getting what would make them sing a new song.
Apparently to show seriousness in this regard, the cable company has decided to flag off a programme tagged Partner Advantage Programme, aimed at working with its partners to provide benefits capable of expanding existing businesses, creating new business opportunities and as well grow capacity for the company.
Part of the benefits of the programme, included that it would help the partners leverage on the existing and new infrastructure available to deliver capacity to collective customers, address complex last mile distribution business needs and address all requests for capacity subscriptions below 10Mbps.
In the over all, the programme is expected at the end to increase internet penetration in Nigeria. In common language, the programme is aimed at beating out ways of offering MainOne customers more reduced prices which they in turn would pass over to the end users.
Dropping the hint of the programme, MainOne’s Head, Marketing and Strategy, Mr Adebayo Oyewole noted that his company in its ten months operation in Nigeria, has discovered that prices of bandwidth which were expected to come down with the landing of the undersea submarine cable, were still high, adding that if nothing was done to check that, the expected gains of the investment would take time to come and eventually look like a fluke.
According to him, the programme may have the blessings of international giants like Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft among others.
According to Oyewole, this programme would see to a major reduction in data packages of the Nigerian telecom operators who are the main customers of the cable company and eventually rub-off positively on the scores of Nigerians hooked on their network services.
He also hinted that his company was going to launch its Internet Protocol, IP platform in July, to enable most of its customers who do not wish to buy an STM1 to also get better services directly from the company.
Although MainOne’s cable initiative has a total of 5terabytes capacity, Oyewole said that about 1.92 capacity has been built already, of which about 10 percent has already been let out in the last ten months.



....Strikes partnership with SEACOM on capacity for Nigeria, SA

In a similar development, the company has also partnered with a leading African cable operator, SEACOM in an effort that has resulted in interconnecting their West and East African Cable Systems to launch capacity services from one Point of Presence, PoP to another, from a STM-1 level and above.
This partnership extends the Main One and SEACOM networks to create a system that offers connection between any SEACOM and Main One PoPs all around Africa between South Africa and Nigeria.
An excited Funke Opeke, Main One CEO, said of the partnership: “While efforts to implement a physical cable between Nigeria and South Africa continue, we have joined our cables together in Europe to satisfy many of our customers’ immediate requirements for capacity between Nigeria and South Africa.”
The joint solution is provided on an open-access basis and is immediately available, providing customers with a timing advantage ahead of the completion of other planned systems around the African continent.
SEACOM CEO, Brian Herlihy said he held the view that “a ring-type system around the entire continent is the best way to attain adequate redundancy whilst offering customers a comprehensive connectivity solution. The announcement shows our determination to find a viable way to extend our system with partners who share our vision to build the African Internet.”
The SEACOM submarine fibre optic network system was launched on 23 July 2009. The cable network serves to directly connect South Africa and Eastern Africa with Europe and Southern Asia, covering a distance of over 17 000km worth of fibre optic technology.

RIM debuts with BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9300 ranges

The new beauts from RIM

By Prince Osuagwu

Research In Motion, RIM has announced a major upgrade in its Bold line range of Blackberry phones, with the imminent arrival of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 Smartphones. Combining the familiar full QWERTY keypad with a new Liquid Graphics touch screen, the 9900 and 9300 will run on the new BlackBerry 7 Operating System and pack 720p HD video.
It will also have built-in Near Field Communications, NFC , technology, a 1.2 GHz processor.
It may also pass as the thinnest BlackBerry form factor yet, spotting 10.5 mm (0.41-inches) size.
On the hardware side, the new Bold's get a 1.2 GHz Processor, 768 MB RAM, 8 GB on-board memory including a microSD slot supporting up to 32 GB cards, a 5 megapixel camera and 720p video recording.
The new beuts also spot a built-in accelerometer and a compass for location-based services and augmented reality overlays like the Wikitude browser, and support for high speed 4G/HSPA+ networks.
Its actually a 2.8-inch phone with Liquid Graphics capacity and touch screen display. It has a 640x480, 287 ppi resolution, perhaps pursuing the iPhone 4 which has about 326 ppi.
RIM says the phones offer up to 60 frames-per-second performance with instant UI action/response.

NCC to intensify enlightenment on SIM Registration

SIMs

By Prince Osuagwu

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has promised to keep the flag of enlightenment on the SIM card registration, flying , so that the full benefits of the exercise must be harnessed. 

The Commission had on March 28, 2011, flagged off the six-month nationwide SIM registration exercise which is slated to end September 28,  2011.

Making the promise, Head, Media and Public Relations of the Commission, Mr. Reuben Muoka, said in Abuja, that the  current campaign will include radio jingles in local languages giving subscribers the location of SIM Card registration centres in all the states of the federation even as key national dailies have been selected to publish the campaign ads.

He said SIM Card registration centres will continue  in various states of the federation and that some of the registration agents will move around with mobile units to cover areas that may not have fixed registration centres in any particular locations such as markets and other similar locations.

In the NCC SIM registration centres, subscribers  would  be able to register all their SIM cards irrespective of  their network of choice . The Commission however said that all subscribers who have already registered with their telecom service providers need ednot come for the registration carried out by the NCC agents as same will be collated for the same purpose at the Central data base for all subscribers in the country.

The general elections which ended last week, may have slowed the pace of the registration but now the elections are over, it is expected that subscribers would have ample opportunity to register their SIM cards with NCC appointed registration vendors nationwide. 

Worldwide mobile phone market adds 20% in first quarter

By Prince Osuagwu


The worldwide mo

Nokia N8 series

bile phone market grew approximately 20 percent closing at 19.8 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2011, according to report released by the International Data Corporate, IDC.
This development according to the corporation, was fueled by high smartphone growth, especially in emerging markets, and gains made by market challengers.
The IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, said that vendors shipped 371.8 million units in first quarter of 2011 compared to 310.5 million units in the first quarter of 2010.
Smartphone growth worldwide, particularly in Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa, MEA, and Latin America, helped lift the overall market to a new first-quarter high. Increasingly, mobile phone makers and carriers are making smartphones affordable to a wider variety of people, which has helped drive the market to new heights.
It also said that Smartphone-specific vendors, such as HTC, continue to grow sales at a steady clip as a result of this trend.
Senior research analyst, Kevin Restivo, noted that “several notable vendors, including feature phone makers, outpaced the overall market, which contributed to share losses of some top suppliers. The growth of companies outside the top 5 vendors such as Micromax, TCL-Alcatel, Huawei, and Research In Motion, shows that the overall market is still very much ripe for share gains”.
Corroborating his position, senior research analyst with IDC's mobile phone technology and trends team, Ramon Llamas added that “at the same time, feature phones have represented the majority of mobile phone shipments, but still are under tremendous pressure from smartphones. This is even as popular quick-messaging devices, that is phones with QWERTY keyboard, once a bright spot within the feature phone market, appear to be losing steam as smartphones gain popularity.
However, the report said that it did not expect feature phones to disappear quickly as there was still strong demand for them across the globe.

How the regions fared in first quarter

* The Asia/Pacific market grew thanks in part to strong mobile phone shipments to Greater China despite the seasonally slow quarter. Smartphone shipment growth was exceptional despite some key product launch delays. In Japan, the market underperformed IDC's forecast due to the impact of the earthquake and tsunami. Japan's largest mobile operators ordered fewer phones than expected in March.

* In Western Europe, Android-based phones and iPhones helped grow the market in the seasonally slow quarter. New devices from HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson sold well in most countries in the high-end tiers. Alcatel, Huawei, and ZTE Android devices helped drive mid-tier segment sales volume. Meanwhile, feature phone shipments receded as more smartphones hit the market. The CEMA markets performed well on a year-over-year basis despite civil unrest in some Gulf countries, such as Egypt, where sales were negatively impacted by the turbulence. Nokia and Research In Motion performed well in the regions overall.

* In the United States last quarter, Apple's iPhone and the LTE-enabled HTC Thunderbolt were two smartphones introduced at Verizon Wireless that helped keep the category front and center of the overall mobile phone market. Feature phones, including once popular quick messaging devices, continued to lose ground. Similarly, in Canada, the market grew thanks to smartphones. BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android devices were best sellers.

* The Latin America market growth continued last quarter as the gap between smartphones and feature phones narrowed. Smartphone shipments were aided by carriers, who are moving customers to 3G networks while vendors shipped more touchscreen and QWERTY models. New Android and Windows Phone devices were launched too, which helped drive smartphone growth. The average selling prices also declined in the region, thanks to aggressive expansion by Chinese vendors.

How emerging markets drive world telecom growth

MOBILE PHONES

By PRINCE OSUAGWU

ICT development has been astonishing in every region of the world over the past five years but recent developments have proven that the developing world and emerging markets actually drive the telecom successes in the entire world at the moment.
 Admitted that over a hundred countries of the world has passed 100 percent in mobile penetration but the rave of the moment is Africa, one of the emerging markets, where there still exists untapped human market for mobile penetration.
At the last count, Eastern Europe is said to be counting about 126.6 percent mobile penetration at the end of 2010. Western Europe also is said to be trailing with 118 percent penetration. This is even when the North and Southern Americas are also said to be fast approaching saturation.
This clearly indicates that if the efforts to connect the next one billion unconnected people are to be intensified, it must focus in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Africa. Although the Asia Pacific region itself is also moving towards saturation with about 68.6 percent as at last quarter of 2010.
Interestingly, in Africa, mobile cellular penetration is also moving, closing at 41.4% in 2010. This was higher than it had been in Asia-Pacific three years earlier, where in 2007 it reached 36.4%. This development gives a good signal emerging markets potential to keep world development in progression
Yet statistics from the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, says that there were as many fixed broadband subscriptions in the developing world in 2010 as there were in the developed world in 2008. Two years earlier, developed world accounted for 251 million while the developing world is now accounting for 253 million. China alone is said to account for around half of all the developing world’s fixed broadband subscriptions.
 It also followed that there were more mobile broadband subscriptions in the developing world in 2010, accounting for 309 million than there were in the whole world in 2007 which accounted for 307 million, just three years earlier.
Perhaps mobile penetration saturation in most of the developed world accounted for goodluck for the developing economies as ITU stated that there were almost as many mobile cellular subscriptions in the developing world in 2010, which accounts for 3.8 billion as there were in the whole world in 2008 which closed at 4 billion, and half a billion more than there were in the developed world in 2007.
By 2010, developing world Internet users accounted for 58% of the global total, with 1.2 billion, compared to 900 million in the developed world. But with most of the world’s population living in developing countries, only a fifth of people there are online, compared to almost three quarters in richer nations.
The ITU statistics also alluded that the Commonwealth of Independent States has the highest mobile cellular penetration of any region in the world, reaching over 130% in 2010.
Even in the area of Short Messaging Services, SMS, developing economies also showed some appreciable improvement, as 40 billion SMS messages were sent in the Arab States in 2010, up from under 10 billion in 2005.
Predictions are that at current growth rates, there will be well over a thousand SMS messages sent in 2011 for every person on the planet.
Following statistics, there were about 2.8 trillion SMS messages sent in 2008; 4.3 trillion in 2009; and 6.1 trillion in 2010.
However, it is in internet penetration that the developed world also showed class. There are more than 400 million Internet users in Europe. This means that two thirds of its population are online and with that, it is the region with the highest Internet penetration in the world.
But most of 2010’s mobile growth was in Asia-Pacific, which saw the number of mobile cellular subscriptions grow by 490 million, to reach 2.6 billion.For the first time, Asia-Pacific now has over half the world’s mobile cellular subscriptions.
However, in Africa, mobile broadband subscriptions grew almost 15-fold over the last three years, from 2 to 29 million. But, despite strong growth, however, Africa remains easily the least Internet-enabled continent, with fewer than one in ten Africans online, and mobile broadband penetration below 4%.

We can do e-voting in 2015 — Rufai, NigComSat boss

Rufai

By Prince Osuagwu

Even though the recent concluded general elections in Nigeria has been given pass mark by a great number of observers, the sore point for technology freaks and ICT experts is that the electronic registration which gulped quite some tax payers money was dumped for manual applications in other processes of the election.
And so, when a few ICT Journalists ran into the Managing Director/Chief Executive of Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, NIGCOMSAT, Engr. Timasaniyu Ahmed- Rufai, recently, the issue was raised, based on the fact that he had advocated for an outright e-voting system earlier before the elections.
Rufai did not also mince words when he stoutly declared that with the e-voting system developed by NIGCOMSAT, Nigeria was ready for e-voting in 2015. Excerpts:
Sir, its good meeting you now, especially as the elections are almost over. Sometime ago you developed and proposed e-voting system for the country.  Has the project been abandoned or is it still relevant, in the light that the system used in the past elections can best be described as electro-manual.?
No, the E-voting system has not been abandoned. The E-voting system was successfully demonstrated to the Chairman of INEC Prof. Attahiru Jega including the entire process from Registration, verification, voting and tallying. Furthermore, the system was recently utilized to conduct election for the Nigcomsat multipurpose cooperative society and was monitored by staff members locally and internationally using various web enabled devices such as Blackberry, iPad and PCs.
Why that project, in the first place, and how long did it take you to develop it?
Nigeria is known by the international community for electoral ineptitude and generally inability to conduct credible elections. Unfortunately credible elections are crucial to the provision of the dividends of democracy. Every quarter of a decade the country prepares for yet another election to determine who takes over the helm of affairs. The lack of enthusiasm displayed by the electorates is a disillusion due to the fact that previous elections have been marred by gross irregularities and lacked credibility because they virtually fail to involve the electorate in the process of electing a candidate..
Consequently, Nigcomsat’s Printed Circuit Board(PCB) & Microelectronics Centre of the Research & Development Department embarked on a mission to mitigate the aforementioned issues. The result was an electronic solution to the existing manual system which is slow, tedious, bulky, unattractive and erroneous.
The electronic voting platform would provide more secure and reliable system in which electorates’ votes count. The electronic nature of the system moderates the level of human interaction with the system thus diminishing its disposition to election malpractices and human errors. It will also restore confidence in electoral processes in the country. The fool-proof and adaptable technology can instantaneously give collated results if communication links are provided to all polling units from local, state to national level. The estimated design and development time of both hardware and software components is 3 months.
This sounds interesting but can you give more insights on how it works?
Like I said, E-voting system is a system developed by a team of software and hardware engineers of the Research & Development department of NigComSat Ltd. It adopts primarily two technologies; the Radio Frequency Identification, RFID and Biometrics.
The RFID, is a technology that offers huge potential for automating processes and providing accurate, reliable data. Its peculiar feature includes provision of a globally unique digital identity to each physical object. This technology comprises of two major units, tags and interrogators. RFID tags are known as transponders that listen for radio signal sent by transceivers/interrogators and readers. When a transponder receives a radio query it replies by sending a unique ID back to the interrogator for further processing. Biometrics technology on the other hand provides means of recognizing humans based on an intrinsic physical trait unique to every individual.
This is more of technical. Can we get this down, streetwise, where even a market woman can key into the essence of these technologies?
What I am explaining is that the E-voting system is divided into three parts namely Registration, verification/voting and collation. Registration, directly captures the details of voters and stores it in a smart card and the details are sent remotely to a database in the election headquarters. It consists of both hardware and firmware units combined to acquire and locally store voters’ data such as fingerprints and personal data.
Voting starts with the verification of the voter. This is very essential to eliminate multiple voting. After the verification, voting starts. The voter follows the instructions to select the candidate in a polling booth. Before saving the details the voter is prompted to confirm their selection and then a field is set in the card to show what election the voter has cast his vote.
Meanwhile, while voting is taking place collation is also taking place simultaneously and the results are displayed real time on a web based application. The cast votes are counted in real time. The votes can be viewed by all but cannot be modified. The communication link between the voting terminal and the remote central database is protected against intruders. So voters, can view results and monitor the progress of their candidate via the web.
Because this system is biometric based, there is no possibility of multiple voting, Impersonation is impossible because you cannot take someone else’s card and vote with it. Invalid votes as a result of ink smear in the traditional voting system is eliminated through the e-voting system which is just by clicking. Real-time online view of the result of the votes cast makes the system more transparent
The benefits are numerous. Bulk paper works is eliminated by the e-voting system, possibilities of human error is reduced. It can be programmed for voters to vote from any part of the country for the candidate of their choice, thus eliminating the risk, cost  and stress of traveling from one place to the other to either register or to vote.
Nigerians in diaspora can also vote irrespective of their geographic location. The network is a highly secured one; Rigging through ballot stuffing, ballot box snatching and hijacking is not applicable
Fantastic. But everything made by man has its challenges. What would that of e-voting system be?
Yes you are right. But the only things we can readily think of is the fear of hacking when the machines are networked, but you also know there are solutions to take care of that if government means business. Again, lack of adequate infrastructural amenities such as power and inadequate ICT access in some geographic regions of the country. Literacy level of the electorates, is also a concern but we can only get better if we decide to get things right. Countries of the world where stable power and ubiquitous infrastructural amenities are order of the day are not so endowed as we are. So what I am saying is that if we decide to adopt this, we can start to work on those challenges now.
Pictures of the physically challenged and vulnerable people of the society who queue under the sun and rain to register or cast votes in the last election were touchy. I wouldn’t know how flexible your system can be to ease off such pains for these set of people?
The combination of our RFID and Biometric system is suitable for Non-handicapped voters by default. However, to accommodate the disabled, our system supports other kinds of authentication hardware like retinal/iris scanners and voice recognition system to allow for different methods of authenticating voters.
Looking at the level of work on this project, assuming all the challenges are taken care of when do you think we are ready to go with this system?
I told you that we have tested it to both INEC and on our own in-house elections which was monitored here and internationally. Everything is ready. As a matter of fact, we can use this system in 2015 and that would be Nigeria, making history again.
Before the e-voting system takes away our attention from the fact that you are the custodian of our satellite communication, may we, for the interest of those who do not know the benefits of satellite communications, ask you to paint a picture of the beauty of satellite technology in the scheme of things today in the country?
The beauty of satellite technology in the scheme of things is in its complex and numerous engineering processes and applications, bringing forth all arms of engineering and physical sciences together. Delivery of satellite services and applications whether Communication, Observation or Navigation Satellite  comes with other immense benefits associated with operations & control, advanced manufacturing processes, process engineering, risk management, complex project engineering management among others. These are the required baselines for a nation like Nigeria which serves as dumping ground for both simple and complex technological products to join the league of industrialized nations.
For instance, Satellite technology plays very important roles in our daily lives.....
.....How?
For instance, it provides Satellite Internet services with wider reach, high data speed, irrespective of geographic location.
Satellite Communication provides Telephony services with wide coverage area, real time transactions, international and regional calls. There is also the Satellite Radio with wide spread of signal with less loss. It also provides Satellite Television with wider reach and range of channels and services.
There is also the Satellite Navigation Systems for positioning, location, fleet management, navigation among other benefits. Weather Satellites also helps in predicting weather situations and this is very vital to human life. Yet,  you can agree with me that satellite’s importance in National security and real time monitoring of critical national infrastructures can not also be wished away.
In developing countries with inadequate terrestrial and cable infrastructures if the digital divide must be bridged, Satellite Communication and other wireless systems are the cornerstone for universal access.
 What chance does Satellite communication stand in the plethora of submarine cables flying in left, right and centre of the ecosystem?
The existence of submarine cables is not a threat to satellite communications. Primarily, they complement each other and address different market targets. For developing countries like Nigeria and other African countries, the infrastructure for cable communication links at the downstream, that is the last mile, is very limited and thus the attendant cost of delivering cable links to millions of homes will be enormous.
 At the same time, the distributed cost of satellite communications is much cheaper and relatively uniform. It is the same cost for someone in a densely populated metropolis to have satellite communications and for a farmer living in a remote area hundreds of kilometers from his next neighbor. For these reasons, even in the developed nations and economies  like U.S.A where cable distribution is already largely in place, vibrant market for satellite communications  still exists for quality broadcasting and strategic national needs including lessons from artificial and natural disasters.
Beyond the satellite or space business, what are Nigerians expecting from NIGCOMSAT?
 Primarily as expected of any regional satellite operator and service provider, NIGCOMSAT Ltd  provides Control, operations and  management of communication satellites including deployment of future fleets to provide redundancy, reliability  and market needs of emerging markets in African and Asian region.
We also provide and lease transponders within its coverage areas, as well as cheap teleport services, enterprise turnkey solutions and applications.
As a state owned enterprise under ministry of science and technology,  NIGCOMSAT provides secured and dedicated bandwidth for defense, maritime and aviation needs of the nation with its hybrid and high powered global infrastructure (NIGCOMSAT-1R).
We also complements existing terrestrial telecommunication infrastructures to promote universal access and increase ICT Development Index, IDI of the citizens.
We can be described as a strategic agency to drive ICT revolution and extraordinary vehicle for domestication of indigenous technologies from its enormous human resource development, acquired technology transfer trainings and varieties of research and development products from satellite technology spin-offs essentially as it concerns satellite and ground infrastructures, thus creating direct and indirect job opportunities for Nigerians, reducing capital flight and promotion of self reliance.