Category: e-Business

iFLUX, a firm with specilaises in light-emitting diode (LED) products, has opened its second brand experience and retail centre in Lagos.

Speaking at the Victoria Island showroom opening, its Managing Director, Teddy Lee said the multinational company is the first of such brands playing in the LED lighting sector to give customers a two-year warranty on all its LED products.

He said: “We have proved to the market the high quality and our commitment to quality assurance. For instance, the 88 solar-powered streetlights installations in Ikeja Computer Village under the ‘Light up Ikeja’ Community Social Responsibility (CSR) project of Tecno are iFLUX products.

“As we speak, those LED streetlights are fully functional; there are no glitches and each one of them has a warranty of two years; within this period, iFLUX will be responsible for fixing or replacing any of the streetlights that show factory faults.”

Its Managing Director, Nigeria, Victor Okpaluku said on a three-hour daily use, the life span of one iFLUX LED light bulb is equivalent to the combined life spans of 20 incandescent bulbs.

He said: “iFLUX products saves up 80 per cent of the energy used to power incandescent lights, the power wattage required to light up an iFLUX light bulb to full glow can be as low as eight watts.”

Also speaking, the Head of Marketing, Digital Base Limited, authorised dealer of iFLUX, Abel Emokai said iFLUX has the state-of-art technology to support the market.

“We are authorised dealer of iFLUX. We will go to other locations as part of the road map. We will go other states but we will have to discuss with iFLUX,” he said.

Globally, the LED technology is used in lighting appliances which is considered to be an eco-friendly and a sustainable lighting alternative has been adopted by global top light brands in marketing their next-generation office and home lighting appliances to local markets across the globe.

This ‘clean’ energy and money saving LED lighting technology adopted by iFLUX markets the brand’s top grade light appliances in the market  is aimed at phasing out the energy wasteful incandescent and fluorescent lighting market.

The firm said for a long time, homeowners and real estate companies have been searching for a reputable light brand that offers affordable yet top quality LED lighting products across range, which have longer life span, save money and come with product warranty.

The iFLUX brand, with the opening of its second store at 20 Idowu Martins, Lagos, plans to put in place for eight more stores across the state.

With the successful privatisation of former state-run telco Nigeria Telecommunication Limited (NITEL) and its mobile arm, Mtel to NATCOM Consortium, and efforts to resuscitate the moribund firm, LUCAS AJANAKU reports that there is need for the Federal Government to also revisit the National Rural Telephony Project (NRTP) which was tied to the infrastructure of the telco.

It is generally believed that with about 150million connected lines to the global system for mobile communication (GSM) and about 107 per cent teledensity, Nigeria has done well, but the report of a study commissioned by the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) showed that over 200 subsidy clusters exist across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria where telecommunication services are yet to reach.

The report, which was released during the last administration at a stakeholder’s forum in Lagos, had consultants that included KPMG.

The study, which was initiated in 2013 by the USPF, was part of the mandate of the USPF, which is to stimulate the deployment and utilisation of ICT services in un-served and underserved communities and groups in the country.

The experience of mobile phone users in the rural areas across the country is nothing to write home about. Even rural communities in metropolitan Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and other major cities across the country are still unconnected. The fact that the industry, because of the problem of poor quality of service (QoS), has become used to multi-SIMING (use of multiple subscriber identity modules (SIM) is also an indication that the about 150million subscribers are far less than that in the real sense. This situation has made the revisit of the moribund NRTP imperative.

Speaking on the issue, Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) urged the Federal Government to synergise with telecoms operators in resuscitating the NRTP.

The Federal Government had in 2011, announced the suspension of the NRTP which started in 2001 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo due to its poor execution.

The first phase of the project was to cover 218 of the 774 local government areas of the country and provide over 636,256 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) lines in all the council areas in the country to have access to information communication technology (ICT) as a way of bridging the digital divide.

The project, which was subdivided into three phases, was estimated to cost $200 million. To show seriousnes, the government involved some private sector operators, namely Key Communications Limited, Suburban Broadband Limited, Voicewares Network Limited, Gicell Wireless Limited, and Hezonic Limited.

President of ATCON, Lanre Ajayi said the clamour was necessary since the government had been unable to implement the project, adding that rural communities had yet to feel the impact of the phenomenal growth in the telecoms sector.

According to Ajayi, the synergy was necessary to bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural areas, especially since the community telephony has been comatose for some years.

Ajayi said the development history of telephony in Nigeria showed that telephone service had always been targeted at the urban dwellers to the exclusion of the rural dwellers that form a major thrust of the economy.

He said: “The Federal Government should support telecommunications providers to reach the under-reached and unserved areas through the USPF.

“In the implementation of rural telephony, government should provide operators stable power supply, accessible roads and improved security of telecoms infrastructures.

“Opening up the rural communities through integration into the national telephone networks will enhance exploitation of the economic potential of the communities and improve the standard of living of the rural dwellers.”

It is the belief of the ATCON chief that this would reduce significantly, the level of poverty and improve the national income profile of the citizens.

He said the government should provide an enabling environment for telecoms operators to make the implementation of the abandoned project a reality.

According to him, despite the fact that GSM service had reached almost every nook and cranny of the country, the rural communities have yet to fully enjoy the gains of famous telecoms revolution.

He noted that community telephony would encourage the growth of agricultural, extractive and manufacturing industries in the rural areas.

According to telecom sector analysts, Nigeria’s failure to implement the NRTP greatly affected the success of the complementary development plan of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The initiative was to connect the world with technology by last year. According to ITU, the Connect the World (Connecting the Unconnected) project was designed to mobilise human, financial, and technical resources for the implementation of the connectivity targets of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Regional Initiatives, adopted by member states at the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference.

Acting Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr. Vincent Olatunji, said the timeline to connect the world last year was not realistic.

He said that due to the gap between countries in terms of technological advancement, each country would need to go ahead with its own connectivity plan, depending on prevailing conditions in the countries.

“The conditions we have in Nigeria are quite different from that of Ghana, South Africa, if you compare that to developed countries like United States, United Kingdom. Some of these projects we need to achieve by last year, the developed countries already have them and are ahead of us. So, the timeline was removed and we were told to just connect schools, hospitals in the rural areas,” Dr. Olatunji said.

 

Technology handshake

 

Former Director, Posts & Telecommunications, Ministry of Communication Technology, Engr John Ayodele recalled that the contract was awarded in 2005 and it was a loan arrangement beteewn Nigeria and China Exim Bank

He said: “In the real sense, the project was conceived before the advent of GSM as a way to kick-start telephoning services in Nigeria at a point in time when we have just about 4000,000 lines for almost (at that time, we said we were about 120million) so the fact from the records that I found in files, the first phase was completed with the exemption of one or two areas where they could not secure land to build the master stations and the idea was that, at the time it was conceived, it was NITEL to take it up and use it as a spreading chip for services, so most of the transmissions.

“NITEL was supposed to be the transmission hub, so they were to hook up to NITEL exchanges but subsequently, the liberalisation policy came. GSM came and government’s focus changed, Nigeria NITEL was meant to be privatised or at least sold out to the public, so the question of NITEL becoming a carrier for rural telephony jeopardised the system at that time. So efforts shifted. Government was no longer budgeting for telecoms because it has been liberalised and government did not want to partake in any form of telephone service. But like four years thereafter, there was no budget on it because it was not a priority of government to partake in telephony service and the rate at which GSM was consuming the system everybody felt that rural telephony will be not be a priority. However, investment has been made and we need to conclude it. So government said the best way to do it is to give it out to private operators. So the country was zoned into six and six private operators were appointed. The process was almost concluded when it was said that the Ministry should seek for the buy-in of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) because it was meant to be a concession arrangement. Remember at the time it was conceived, there was no ICRC so ICRC came with all sorts of conditions that were not precedent to the establishment of the rural telephony and for the past three years, the ministry has not been able to get the buy-in of the ICRC. They were always coming up with conditions that were not part of the conditions when the project was created. There was no way to backdate what was done at that time to meet what ICRC is doing today. So, as I am talking to you now, ICRC has not given any concession and the project is now almost like moribund so, as at today six, operators have been selected, they have gone through the whole bidding process. We were just about to give it out when the Attorney General and Minister of Justice advised that the FEC should be brought into the show for final approval and determination. You cannot go to FEC without either ICRC or the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) giving a buy-in because it was a concession arrangement, it is ICRC that should have provided the buy-in but goal post keep changing; we still hope to meet with ICRC one-on-one.

Ayodele said explanation had been made in letters, adding that initially they say they will go round the system and see the thing themselves.

He said: “Actually between you and I, the technology of 2001 when it was conceived was based on CDMA, so even if anybody should buy it today, it is still a long way to getting it to function because they now have a way to migrate it to LTE. If they don’t go that direction, it is not (going to function) and a lot of the project has been vandalised over the years. It’s a fairly complicated issue because if you say you still want to go by what happened in 2005, it’s very difficult because the technology has to change. Anybody who is buying it now has to start a total revolution but we are still making efforts to make sure we get the operators to still go the same way they accepted to go.”

He said the six companies are Nigerian companies that are into one telecom service or the other but not necessarily GSM operation. According to him, at the time the project was conceived, spectrum allocation was at the discretion of government and they were to ride on the spectrum of NITEL.

“So even if we sell it today now, we still have an issue with spectrum. So many concepts that have been overtaken by events so that is why I say it is a bit complicated because at that time, spectrum would have been given to them on what government allocated to NITEL so today, even if they buy, they still have to go for a round of licencing with NCC which was not the concept at the time it was made so, even if they agree to take over today, they are coming back to ask for the free licence and government can no longer give free licence to anybody.

“It’s a bit complicated but not insurmountable, it just means that we have to reengineer the whole scheme from the beginning and that is what we want to discuss with ICRC even start from scratch, then it will be like selling scrap and we want to avoid selling scrap.

“Its a national issue and anyway we can get it done to add value to what we already have.It is the best for the nation and we need to move forward to see how it adds value to the system and we are getting there gradually.”

With the acquisition of NITEL/Mtel, Communications Technology Minister, Adebayo Shittu, who has displayed passion to leave an indellible mark in the industry, must insist that the project be implemented by ntel. Coincidentally, ntel has promised to roll out service on LTE.

 

An indigenous player in the electronic payment segment of the information technology (IT) industry, VoguePay, has lamented the high cost of tracking online crooks and the time it takes to get justice in the country.

Its Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Leke Ojikutu, told reporters in Lagos, that online fraud could affect everyone, who makes or accepts payments online; partly because it’s easier to steal anonymously. He added that tracking down someone over the internet and prosecuting them is difficult and almost impossible.

Ojikutu, also a co-founder of the firm, said one of the key steps to eliminating online frauds, is the ability to recognise it before a card is charged.

A renowned software architect, who has developed applications for federal and state government parastatals/agencies, including the deployment of the first tax database of Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS), he said the industry experience was critical to building VoguePay into a trusted online payment processor in Nigeria.

He said identity theft is a crime online payment platforms needed to reduce to its barest minimum. This, he said, is where VoguePay plays a crucial role to its users as every merchant is unique and has a unique sales history and e-behaviour that the system recognises and uses to prevent fraud from being carried out on his account.

According to him, reports from institutions such as Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and DataGroupIT are helpful in helping to quantify the impact of financial losses due to online fraud. He said NDIC reported over N25.61 billion loss to fraud in 2014 while DataGroupIT’s recent white paper indicated a more severe impact of N78billion/$391million loss to online fraud in Nigeria yearly.

These losses are attributable to increase in the incidences of payment fraud conducted through various channels, which include stolen credit cards, compromised online accounts, web and browser-based malware, system breaches, social engineering, malware and SQL injection among others designed to sabotage the account holders of their funds.

Ojikutu noted that this was why VoguePay has evolved several anti-fraud protocols and intelligent approaches to eliminate possibility of fraud and/or stop it before it succeeds. He added: “Some of these measures include data storage and transmission on strong encryption technology, safe user authentication procedures at login and secure session handling. We combine several principles to authenticate the author of a transaction as being rightfully authorised to carry out such transactions.”

On a global scale, he said, there was need for collaboration between payment processors, card issuers and security agencies in terms of reporting and investigating incidents and apprehending perpetrators. “That is why VoguePay is championing stronger cross-continent collaboration between payment processors, card issuers and security agencies in reporting and investigating incidents and apprehending perpetrators, this is because in order to facilitate safe online transactions, the decision on who can transact cannot be left to chances,” he further stated.

VoguePay is also a member of the Electronic Payment Providers of Nigeria (E-PPAN), a non-governmental organisation that provides advocacy on safe electronic payment transactions in the country.

 

Amid pomp and ceremony, the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration unveiled the National Broadband Plan (NBP), which set  milestones for the country to achieve in the immediate, short and long terms. The plan may be mere wishful thinking considering the investment in infrastructure, reports Lucas Ajanaku.

The Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Dambatta, is not a politician. Coming from the ivory tower, he is not likely to play to the gallery. So he knew what he was saying  when he said the government may not attain the 30 per cent broadband target set for 2018 in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) 2013-2018.

For one, there is inadequate infrastructure on ground to support the plan. For another, there is no funding, especially from the private sector to push the plan. The  Federal Government’s plan to licence seven infrastructure firms (InfraCos) has bee prolonged. Under the plan, one InfraCo each would be licensed for the six geopolitical zones of the country; Lagos, because of its size and potential will have one.

However, with only two InfraCos so far licensed for deployment in Lagos and Northcentral,  the EVC said the NCC is committed to driving the process  to completion, with about 24 months to go. According to him, broadband penetration in the country stands at seven per cent, a level below the average set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Telecoms revolution has played very significant role in this area.

Telecos such as MTN, Airtel, Glo and Etisalat have provided bulk of the mobile, broadband.

Dambatta said:  “We have said this (the realisation of the milestones of the NBP) must be driven by massive investment in infrastructure, otherwise, this will not be attainable.

“We are at the stage of developing the regulatory framework and we are doing that and once this exercise is completed we are envisaging that the licensing of the remaining zones with the provision of broadband infrastructure will take place within the next three or four months.”

The Chief Executive Officer, Teledon Group, Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem, said the advantages of rapid, ubiquitous and affordable broadband deployment cannot be over-emphasised as broadband platforms promote the convergence of voice, data and audio visual services onto a single network. Broadband infrastructure is central to achieving the goal of financial/digital inclusion being championed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), enabling universal, sustainable, ubiquitous and affordable access to Information Communication Technology (ICT) by all and providing sustainable connectivity and access to remote and marginalised areas at national, state and local government levels.

In 2007 South Africa approved the building of an information society,  based on the outcome of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society which Nigeria also participated in the summit. The summit resolved that lCT infrastructure is the foundation for the development of an information society. (World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Action Line C2, Information and Communications Infrastructure is an essential foundation for the Information Society.) The development of a Broadband Policy is in line with global trends and is critical to ensure realisation of the goal of an all inclusive information society that can enjoy the economic benefits associated with broadband in both urban and rural areas.

Former Director, Regulatory Affairs and Special Projects, Airtel Nigeria, Osondu Nwokoro, who spoke on Policy and Regulatory Imperatives for Broadband Ubiquity at a public forum, said the launch of the NPB by the Federal Government is consistent with developments in other jurisdictions, adding that it is a step in the right direction and showed government’s commitment to pursue a broadband agenda for the country.

Nwokoro, who now works for the scrap left by NITEL/Mtel, which has metamorphosed into ntel and is struggling to pull itself from the bootstrap, defined broadband as the easiest, fastest, and high speed internet access for data transmission and download. Compared to traditional telephone and modem, broadband supports real time internet radio, music, video, gaming, interactive services and others.

The NBP defines broadband as an internet experience where the user can access the most demanding content in real time at a minimum speed of 1.5megabytes per second (Mbps).

Broadband Commission for Digital Development said: “Access to broadband infrastructure and services must, therefore, be a top policy priority for countries around the globe, developed and developing alike, and least developed countries. Governments and business must work together to develop innovative policy frameworks, business models and financing arrangements needed to facilitate growth in access to broadband worldwide.”

Wireless broadband was expected to contribute an additional N190billion to gross domestic product (GDP) last year while wireless broadband was expected to have a direct revenue impact (spend on usage and devices) of N598billon or 0.7 per cent of GDP at the end of last year, he said, adding that its ecosystem value will be N124billion comprising consumer retail (m-commerce; m-entertainment), financial services (m-banking), social services (m-learning, m-health, and m-governance) and corporate verticals (m-farming, m-enterprises, m-utilities).

Head, Core Network Services, Cyberspace Network Limited, Osuere Peter said broadband is the totality that forms the entity for faster information delivery across a network. This network could either be digital subscriber line (DSL), fiber-optic, cable modem, satellite, wireless and broadband over power lines (BPL).

He said customers could now carry on banking transaction activities via their fixed and mobile devices while e-commerce sites such as Konga, Jumia, Olx have also emerged.

It has also led to the provision of public services such as driver-license application, international passport, national ID card registration and the general e-government solutions, adding that the implementation of regulatory framework and policies to promote electronic transaction such as the cashless policy of the CBN.

According to the ambitious targets of the NBP, fixed broadband targets for cities (currently standing at 1.5per cent) was expected to go up to 10 per cent last year in the short term, 16 per cent medium term of 2018 and long term target of 25 per cent by 2020. Penetration level, which stands at 0.5 per cent, will move up gradually to 3.3 per cent, 5.3 per cent and 8.3 per cent respectively.

 

Challenges

 

Paucity of spectrum is a major challenge. The NBP acknowledges the place of spectrum in mobile broadband and proposed to publish plan for freeing up spectrum for LTE (long term evolution) rollout last year, conduct licensing of 2.5/2.6 GHz spectrum in 2014 and facilitate accelerated wireless infrastructure expansion and upgrade with operators. President, Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Lanre Ajayi is not impressed with the way the National Frequency Management Board (NFMB) is going about its business.

“We are disturbed that NCC has not been able to assign spectrum to operators for a long while. Past attempts to assign the 2.6Ghz have failed,” he lamented. It is also feared that the 2.6GHz spectrum availability could be delayed beyond this year while the 700/800 MHz digital dividend awarded to MTN has become a subject of controversy.

Limitation of one InfraCo to one geopolitical zone, he said, has the tendency to breed monopoly such as NITEL. “We are concerned that licensing of InfraCos are being unduely delayed; we are particularly concerned that licences are being limited to one operator per defined geographic zone; we believe having just one operator in a zone creates monopoly and it may inadvertently bring us back to the dreadful days of NITEL. We canvass for multiplicity of licences per zone,” he said, adding that it will create competition and diversity on various routes where cables are to be laid thereby increasing network reliability.

Nwokoro lamented that fixed infrastructure is not available in Nigeria and the cost and burden of putting same in place is daunting, adding that wireless is the only viable option for broadband penetration.

Another issue is that of Right of Way (RoW), permits and other planning approval processes and associated charges between different ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) at Federal, state and local levels remain a strong disincentive for infrastructure development.

Though NBP proposes to secure RoW waivers with states and also pursue expedited RoWs, achieving this goal between the three tiers of government remains a daunting challenge.

Other challenges are device ownership and access points, which are vital to adoption and utilisation.

“NBP proposes to challenge OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to produce sub $30 access devices to reduce cost of ownership and thus facilitate uptake by the broader subscriber base.

“NBP also proposes to deploy local access points (in NIPOST premises and local government headquarters) to facilitate access within 2km for people, who cannot afford to own access devices,” he said.  But in spite of all the promises of the market size, major OEMs are unwilling to site assembly plants in Nigeria for device manufacturing, on account of unstable electricity supply, intellectual property rights issues and obstacles in the business environment. Only Rlg has braved the odds to do so.

 

Way forward

 

Mandate should be given to the National Frequency Management Council (NFMC) to articulate a spectrum roadmap to address timely available, cost-effective pricing and licensing spectrum band to support mobile broadband penetration.

Another is resuscitation of the NFMB and expansion of its membership to incorporate private sector.

Consideration should be given to the 900 MHz and 2.5/2.6 GHz spectrum re-farming to support mobile broadband on LTE while spectrum policy and regulation to support flexibility to supporting regional integration.

Transition to a converged regulatory and spectrum environment by the merger of NCC and Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) consistent with international best practice must be looked into. This is where the National Assembly comes in. The sector analysts say instead of gallivanting all over the place, summoning individuals and corporate organisations under the guise of oversight functions, they should sit and enact laws that will ensure that the goals of NBP are achieved to promote access to e-literacy in the educational system; promote access to quality health services; increase efficiency in government processes; make Nigeria a competitive destination for investment; bridge the yawning digital divide; and promote inclusiveness of rural and marginalised communities.

It is good that data centers are springing up across the country. Efforts must be made to have solutions that can bring together independent broadband technology platforms to function as a single unit.

 

Lack of funds to invest in the provision of broadband infrastructure is a major problem inhibiting its penetration in Nigeria, Executive Director, Numeric Technologies Limited, Alexander Anago, has said.

He said there are a lot people pursuing individual interest in the industry, adding that if there is a common interest, there will be better broadband penetration in the country.

Anago said there is need to improve broadband penetration for non private universities, saying students need to do research. “We also need to look in to secondary and primary schools for broadband penetration, because that is where the university students are trained from. If information is known from the primary schools, we will have more excellent students in the secondary and university,” he said.

He urged the Federal Government to seek advice from organisations that are into information management to assist them in the implementation of the policies it has put in place to manage information.

He lamented that the government has a lot of policies, but noted that it lacks proper information management.

“This is not to say that there is a challenge with the policies, but with its implementation. Only Lagos State, out of the 36 states in the country has implemented its policies on information management,” he said.

He urged the government to stop rolling out policies and focus on implementation, adding that the private sector must come together to execute the government policy in line with international standard in order to improve the economy.

The major challenges on information management in Nigeria, he noted, are the people, awareness and capacity building, stressing that there is need to teach the upcoming professionals on how to manage information.

“The private sector needs to help the public sector. In the private sector, we know the policies in government, we should help the government to review, improve and implement its policies. We need to have more laws on information management. The private sector can draft the bills and pass them on to the National Assembly, which will pass them into law,” he said.

 

He urged the private sector to implement policies and prevent leakages of information. He said: “We should educate people and build capacity. The private sector should share its knowledge and let people know how to protect information management in the country,” he said.

Anago urged the private sector to stop the idea of facing their organizations alone. “We should all come together to write a good frame work for Nigeria on information management, review it, get experts across the world to look at it and then pass the bill. We cannot be investing our money and the government is taking our taxes without doing anything. At the end of the day, we will find it difficult to reinvest. We need to have relationship to ensure that everything is done properly with the government,” he said.