The Nation Newspaper

Category: e-Business

  • ‘Broadband penetration vital to online business growth’

    The Managing Director, Shop to My Door, an online trading platform, Mr Nduka Udeh, has said broadband penetration is needed to boost online trading in the country, adding that efforts of the government in this direction will address the issue if purposefully pursued.

    According to him, broadband availability has helped the firm to stabilise, arguing that when it first started, is started paying as much as $1,000 per month for a 256 kilo watt per second connection but now, it is just $100 for a four mega bytes per second connection.

    “So the cost of bandwidth has been falling and it is good for online trade,” he said.

    He said online shopping provides users a save, convenient and dependable means of purchasing items, adding that in spite of the teething problems confronting the sub-sector, it will continue to grow and contribute to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

    Speaking at an ATM & Card Expo at eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, he said most people fail to realise that the money they ought to have saved shopping online by way of clearing and forwarding costs are taken off their necks when they shop online.

    According to him, with offices in the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US) and China, all the clients needed to do is use their automated teller machine (ATM) cards to shop from online stores in those with ease at the comfort of their homes and get it delivered between three and four days or four and six weeks depending on the type of shipping they desire.

    According to Udeh, fears about the security of online transactions may be keeping some people away from taking advantage of the platform, he however said the platform deployed by the firm is such that does not store the data of the customer, saying once the transaction is carried out, nothing concerning the card holders is ever stored.

    He said: “We encourage customers to pay for their items online and whenever they are having difficulties with it they pay through our website. Shop to My Door operates on a platform that doesn’t store cardholders’ data and once the payment goes, the card details automatically deletes. We use FFL encryption, verified by Visa and MasterCard’s secured option.”

  • Airtel customers hit 300m

    Bharti Airtel has announced that it has crossed the 300 million customer mark across its operations. The milestone includes customers across mobile, fixed line and DSL, and DTH services.

    In a statement, the telco recalled that it began operations in 1995, reached the 100 million customers mark in 2009 and crossed the 200 million mark in 2012. The latest 100 million customers have joined the Airtel family in less than two years. The Company ranks as the fourth largest mobile service provider globally and second largest globally outside of China.

    Airtel Africa Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr. Christian de Faria, said: “This milestone underlines the strength of our operations, which is one of the largest on a global scale. It is also a tribute to the ‘Airtel’ brand which is trusted by customers in 20 countries. Today, telecom is at the cusp of transformation, which, going forward will be driven as much by the force of technology as by the changing demographics in emerging markets across Asia and Africa.

    “Accelerated data consumption by the youth is going to be the underlying story. I am confident that Airtel will continue to be at the forefront of this future growth story and continue to delight customers by adding value to their lives.”

    In Africa, Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile operator in the Continent in terms of geographical footprint, which spans 17 countries with over 70 million customers.

    Airtel’s mobile networks cover over 1.85 billion people across its operations in 20 countries and carry over 311 billion minutes of calls every quarter.

     

  • ‘GITEX’ll foster FDI, promote local content’

    The Commercial Director, Exhibition and Events Management, Dubai World Trade Centre,  Bilal Al-Rais has said Nigeria’s participation at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) will boost foreign direct investment and promote local content development in the country.

    He said this would help grow the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the single digit figure of nine per cent to double digit figure of about 20 per cent.

    Speaking on the technology fiesta, he said it would provide an opportunity for the country to showcase its largely untapped information technology (IT) potentials to over 4,000 investors aside other high profile participants expected at the event holding at the United Arab Emirates in October.

    He recalled that what is known as telecoms revolution first started with the licensing of the telcos, the firms that picked the global system for mobile communication (GSM) licences reluctantly did so and had hoped to begin seeing return on their investment (RoI) in five years, adding that it was a pleasant surprise that some of them got RoI within the first six months of operation.

    He said the government was desirous of pushing for the country’s presence at the event as Gitex Local Organising Committee (LOC) has been inaugurated by the Director General of NITDA, Mr. Peter Jack, adding that Nigeria is country partner for the event.

    Also, more than 35,000 visitors came from Africa in the 2013 edition of GITEX where Nigeria premiered its presence by setting up the Nigerian Pavilion which was promoted by NITDA.

    He said, this year, Nigeria is riding on its last year’s presence as Official Country Partner to become the centre of thematic activities for the five day technology expo and conference in Dubai.

    He said Nigeria’s presence at Gitex would offer the opportunity to explore international opportunities for collaborations and investments that would further advance Nigeria’s burgeoning IT sector.

    He cited South Korea and India where information technology alone contribute over $200 billion to the economy, adding that 100 other countries will be in attendance to at the event.

  • NITDA urges creation of SITDA

    The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has urged the 36 states to establish the equivalent of the agency to fast-track the penetration of information communications technology (ICT) in the country.

    Its Deputy Director, Corporate Strategy and Research, Dr Vincent Olatunji, who spoke on the sideline at an Information Communication Technology (ICT) forum said if the states embraced the initiative and create State Information Technology Development Agency (SITDA), it would speed up the deployment and use of ICT across the country.

    He said after two major global conference on ICT, it was agreed that each country went back home and unveiled a road map on ICT.

    According to him, policies don’t work unless strategies are put in place to ensure seamless implementation, adding that the agency had done a lot in the area of providing infrastructure, manpower development and strategy for ICT growth.

    He said NITDA has done so well in providing the roadmap at the federal level, adding that agency is encouraging the states to set up SITDA to help harmonise the needs of the various government agencies, departments and ministries with a view to streamlining policy implementation for overall national development.

    “We believe that is the way to drive ICT development and deployment across the country. Sixty per cent of our people live in the rural areas. With SITDA or a bureau directly under the office of the state governor, ICT deployment will be all inclusive. It will go down into the rural areas,” he said.

    He lamented that when the agency wrote all governors on the need to position the country as an ICT nation on the global space, only Osun, Enugu and Lagos states responded, adding that the pilot project with the states had been  successful.

    He said the second phase of the project would capture Yobe, Sokoto, Ebonyi and about seven others. According to him, the modus operandi of the scheme is that states would first identify their ICT needs and brought them to the attention of NITDA, which would in turn work with them through its resources persons on how to evolve a workable framework for policy formulation and consequently, implementation.

    Dr Olatunji said the agency was interested in both software and hardware and had created an ICT local content board while guidelines had been launched.

    He added that what was needed was a multi-stakeholders’ approach. He identified cloud computing, e-strategies, big data as new areas of global attention, adding that NITDA had inaugurated report on bid data and digital strategies.

  • How Nigeria can move up the knowledge economy ladder

    Many countries are deploying information communications technology (ICT) tools in solving economic, political, social and cultural challenges. The World Bank says Nigeria ranks 118th on its Knowledge Economy Index (KEI). Experts at the national conference of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) canvass that  steps be taken urgently to address the situation for Nigeria to move forward in  ICT, LUCAS AJANAKU reports.

    The World Bank ranking is frightening. No African country made the list of its global ranking of countries by Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), which is based on the four pillars of the Knowledge Economy (KE). Not even the United States, Britain or Germany made the list of the first 10 leading countries.
    The global lender identified education and training, information infrastructure, economic incentive and institutional regime and innovation systems as the four critical requisites for a country to be able to fully participate in the knowledge economy:
    It said an educated and skilled population is needed to create, share and use knowledge while a dynamic information infrastructure-ranging from radio to the internet-is required to facilitate the effective communication, dissemination and processing of information.
    It argues that a regulatory and economic environment that enables the free flow of knowledge, supports investment in ICT, and encourages entrepreneurship is central to the knowledge economy. Also, it believes a network of research centres, universities, think-tanks, private enterprises and community groups are necessary to tap into the growing stock of global knowledge, assimilate and adapt it to local needs, and create new knowledge.
    The liberalisation of the telecoms sector has been both a blessing and a curse. While foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow is estimated to have reached $35billion, subscriber figures have passed 130 million, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). With this growth has come the challenge of data security which experts say is a pre-requisite for a knowledge economy.
    President, NCS, Prof David Adewumi, said the black race was in a deep slumber when the industrial revolution swept across Europe and America. He said it would be unfortunate if ongoing ICT revolution was allowed to elude the country. According to him, creating a knowledge based economy in the country requires the support of the IT sector, lamenting that insecurity of data and lack of awareness were some of the issues to be addressed by stakeholders.
    Manager, Cyber Risk Services, Deloitte Nigeria Funmilola Odumuboni, who spoke on Security issues in a knowledge-based economy defined Data Information Knowledge as “Information, understanding, or skill that you get from experience or education; Facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.”
    She explains: “One, where organisations and people acquire, create, disseminate, and use knowledge more effectively for greater economic and social development; an economy where knowledge is recognised as the driver of productivity and economic growth. As a result, there is a new focus on the role of information, technology and learning in economic performance.”

    Security issues in a knowledge- based economy
    According to her, piracy, data protection, identity theft, industrial espionage, platform interoperability are some of the challenges of a knowledge based economy.
    She said: “In the economy of knowledge, data is collected about everyone and it is a prime currency for activities and business. Protection of this information/data within the economy therefore, has to be of topmost importance.”
    According to her, the inability to know the people who has access to information; what information is being accessed; which information is flowing out of organisations and nation; and how this information is flowing out.
    The need to protect data from threat sources within and outside organisations and institutions is underscored by the importance of protecting the entire organisation.

    Piracy
    Odumuboni said one of the biggest security issues that would spring up from a knowledge-based economy is piracy. The reliance on knowledge as a means of exchange makes susceptibility to piracy a grand and growing problem.
    “Piracy is the act of illegally copying someone’s product or invention without permission. The BSA and IDC, global software piracy study revealed that the commercial value of unlicensed PC software installations totaled $62.7 billion globally in 2013,” she said.
    According to experts, piracy is not restricted to software alone, it covers several types of intellectual property including but not limited to organisational and aational trade secrets, movies, music, software source code and inventions products.
    Piracy will lead to loss of revenue, killing of innovation, reputational damage and loss of competitive advantage.

    Identity theft
    She described identity theft as a form of stealing someone’s identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person’s identity, usually as a method to gain access to resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person’s name.
    “In a knowledge-based economy where most information is digital, the challenge will be confirming the identity of each and every person. Although identity theft is not restricted to social media sites but social media can be a good place to harvest information. With a stolen identity, the attacker can perpetrate all kinds of activities,” she averred.

    Industrial espionage
    Industrial espionage is the act of attempting to obtain trade secrets by dishonest means, as by telephone- or computer-tapping, infiltration of a competitor’s workforce and other unwholesome methods.
    She said with the advent of knowledge as a means to corporate wealth, the race for a company’s knowledge-base takes the fight to a whole new level, adding that industrial espionage is conducted for commercial purposes rather than national security purposes (espionage) and should be differentiated from competitive intelligence, which is the legal gathering of information.

    Cases of industrial espionage
    Hilton and Starwood: In April 2009 the United States-based hospitality company Starwood accused its rival Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its own Denizen hotels.
    Opel vs Volkswagen: In 1993, car manufacturer Opel, the German division of General Motors, accused Volkswagen of industrial espionage after Opel’s chief of production, Jose Ignacio Lopez, and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen
    Microsoft vs Oracle: Larry Ellison, the head of Oracle was said to have involved bribing the cleaning staff at Microsoft’s Washington office in order to lay their hands on documents
    Gillette vs Steven Louis Davis: In 1998, Steven Louis Davis was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.3 million in restitution for his theft of trade secrets from Gillette. He was sent confidential designs to various competitors of Gillette.

    Platform interoperability
    According to the Deloitte security expert, in a knowledge-based economy, reliance on infrastructure for data delivery is more emphasised than ever. Information may be accessed via different media and platforms that have different levels of security. At the point of interoperation and interface there is a wide gap that may be skilfully exploited by a seasoned attacker.
    “What appears to be a minor platform glitch may become a door for an attacker. When the knowledge cannot be confined to a singular location, it faces the risk of being misused by anyone who has access to it outside a confined physical location,” she said.

    Sources of threats to data/information
    Hackers: In the computer security context, Wikipedia, defined a hacker as someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, challenge or enjoyment. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground and is now a known community. While other uses of the word hacker exist that are not related to computer security, such as referring to someone with an advanced understanding of computers and computer networks, they are rarely used in mainstream context. They are subject to the longstanding hacker definition controversy about the term’s true meaning. In this controversy, the term hacker is reclaimed by computer programmers who argue that someone who breaks into computers, whether computer criminal (black hats) or computer security expert (white hats), is more appropriately called a cracker instead. Some white hat hackers claim that they also deserve the title hacker, and that only black hats should be called “crackers”.
    Script kiddie (also known as a skid or skiddie) is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the underlying concept—hence the term script (that is a prearranged plan or set of activities) kiddie (that is kid, child—an individual lacking knowledge and experience, immature.
    Another source of threat to data is countries. In international circles, data protection is increasingly becoming vital as nations seek to take advantage of one another in the rat race to develop. The case of Ed Snowden, the American computer professional is instructive in this instance.
    Some of the mechanisms used to obtain confidential information include social engineering, phishing, malicious software, collaboration with insiders and rogue wireless networks.

    Way forward Dependable identity management

    She said identity management is a set of processes and supporting technologies for maintaining a person’s complete set of identity spanning multiple business and application contexts. Identity Management is the key to combating identity theft. The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has started a project of creating an Identity Management System (IMS) for Nigerians, everybody’s information would be tied to their unique National Identity Number (NIN) that would be verifiable. This would make it harder for criminals to impersonate people.
    NIMC’s Director-General, Chris said: “When we conclude the integration for a national resource optimisation, based on a standardised process of data capture and management and sustain it, Nigeria will be a better place for all because it will unlock significant economic and employment potential; it will drive financial inclusion; it will stimulate demand and domestic production in a peculiar way and this will in turn impact on gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate. Most people did not believe the telecom sector will be transformed with the GSM revolution. It happened. Most people do not believe the identity sector will be transformed, by God’s grace, it will happen.”

    Resilient information security framework
    An Information security framework is the collection of processes and practices that are used to manage the definition and ongoing operation and management of the information security risks. It should address the following. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has commenced the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) project which it assures will make repudiation of online transactions impossible.

    Adequate legislation
    To promote the knowledge economy, people have to be assured they will get justice when there is abuse of knowledge. Therefore, laws should be enacted to address issues such as piracy, cyber crime, corporate espionage, identity theft, data privacy/data protection. The National Assembly should expedite action on the passage of the cyber security bills that have been gathering dust on its floors.

    Awareness
    Another important factor for a knowledge based economy is the need to create awareness for the people to protect their data to guide against its being used by criminals to defraud them.
    To her, this can be achieved via: government leadership: Raising awareness and setting the course for collaboration amongst entities( for example parastatals, private sector, academia, and the general public); Seminars, conferences: Can be used to facilitate engagement of particular segments of the community (e.g. small businesses and school children) with targeted specific messages; Assistance for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs): Some countries use a security health check for SMEs as a mechanism to raise awareness; and Collaboration: Ministries, regulators, organisations as well as multinational companies, academia and individual users have a role to play in awareness.

  • ‘Why MTN launched mobile health insurance’

    MTN veered into providing mobile health insurance because it believes in a healthy society, its Chief Executive Officer, Michael Ikpoki has said.

    He spoke when the telco signed a deal with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the nation and the aggregator, Salt and Einstein.

    He said health is wealth and a healthy citizenry will remain invaluable asset to the productive sector of the economy.

    He said:  “At MTN, we believe that health insurance contributes to removing the financial barriers to healthcare, thereby giving people unrestricted access to good health care without having to pay out-of-pocket. More than bringing flexibility and ease to paying for health care service, health insurance is also a means of providing greater access to healthcare for larger segments of a population. Indeed we believe health insurance is imperative for closing the gap between the availability of health care service and the ability of the citizenry to access it.”

    Described as The MTN Y’ello health cover, he said it is an all-inclusive mobile health insurance scheme, which will give all Nigerians the opportunity to  access good, affordable and quality healthcare service wherever, whenever the need arises. The scheme will allow subscribers to gain access to pre-defined treatments and also freedom to choose their own Health Maintenance organisation (HMO), and healthcare provider from over 6000 registered partners across Nigeria.

    Under the scheme, subscribers will have access to unlimited number of visits to the hospital with at a weekly deduction of   N250 only.

    NHIS Executive Secretary, Dr. Femi Thomas said: “This new service will provide Nigerians affordable health insurance cover on a pre-paid basis.

    “Through the Y’ello Health, mobile subscribers are able to opt into a micro healthcare insurance scheme through Health Management Organisations (HMO’s), using their mobile phones for a range of pre-defined medical treatments for which affordable premium can also be remitted through the subscribers’ mobile phone.

    The MTN Y’ello is one of the many ways Africa’s leading telecommunications network is adding value to the lives of it subscribers. The next leg of the launch will take place in Abuja at a yet-to-be-announced date.

  • A consumer parliament without its soul

    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) introduced the Telecoms Consumer Parliament in partial fulfillment of its mandate. But at the parliament’s last sitting in Lagos, NCC changed the rule of the game. It restricted the number of participants to “important stakeholders” in the industry, reports LUCAS AJANAKU.

    For regular participants at the monthly Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP), the 75th edition at Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos must have come as a shock. For one, the consumers for which the forum was created to provide succour were nowhere to be found. For another, the venue was elitist and would definitely not be attractive to consumers were they invited.

    Some people explained that the decision of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to hold the event at the venue was to save cost because earlier on, it had launched the Code of Corporate Governance for the Telecommunications Industry.

    In his opening remarks the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr Eugene Juwah, said the feedbacks from TCP had enhanced the regulatory activities of the Commission, adding that Enforcement Regulation and Quality of Service (QoS) Regulation of 2012 were some of the gains of the parliament.

    He said the forum has been repackaged to limit participation to major stakeholders to enhance robust discussion and rich discussion.

    He lamented that in spite of all that had been done in the industry by the regulator, the vexed issue of poor QoS remained with the industry, adding that issues, such as misleading adverts by operators, poor data services, unsolicited text messages, payment for services not rendered and others were still part of the experience of subscribers. Juwah said the forum would find solutions to all these problems.

    While all the telecoms operators in the country were adequately represented with the Director-General, National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Adolphus Joe Ekpe, an important stakeholder, such as Consumer Protection Council (CPC) was not represented at all. Similarly, the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS) was not represented. Analysts say the refusal of the NCC to extend invitation to the group’s President, Deolu Ogunbanjo may not be unconnected with the fact that the group has dragged the operators and the regulator to court praying for relieves for the subscribers.

    Only two self-proclaimed bulwarks of consumer rights movement, Leadership Watch led by Dr Marthins Iwuayanwu and Consumer Empowerment Organisation of Nigeria, led by Adedeji Abiodun were on the occasion to represent the interest of over 130 million subscribers in the country.

    NCC’s Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau, Mrs Maryam Bayi  said the decision of the regulator was to give a new direction to the idea of the TCP, adding that it has stopped being a forum for consumers to complain about the various fraudulent practices of their service providers. She said such issues will no longer be addressed at the Consumer Parliament but at other fora put in place by the regulator such as Consumer Outreach Programme and Town Hall Meetings.

    She identified eight items to be addressed by the elite gathering. The items are: unsolicited text messages/telemarketing; disappearance of air time/dropped balance; drop calls; customer care centre monitoring; inaccessibility of customer care help lines; unlawful deduction of ‘credit’ for value added services (VAS) not subscribed to; poor network service/unavailability of service; and advertisement of unapproved promos.

    She advised customers who were disenfranchised from the forum to complain to the Bureau, adding that the first step they should take will be to complain and get a ticket then follow it up by reporting to Bureau through its contact centre should they fail to get redress to their problem.

    According to her, consumers don’t usually get opportunity to opt out of some the VAS once they find themselves engaged either by deception or fraudulently by subscribing them to the service. Bayi lamented that when the consumers even get an opportunity to opt out, they are automatically renewed at the end of the month. “We are all fustrtaed,” she said.

    Bayi said the network of the operators have become epileptic in some parts of country. according to her, the Bureau received complaints from the Samaru and Congo Campuses of of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria over the poor services of MTN, warning that the industry cannot be sustained without subscribers.

    She complained that even when operators were called upon to stop running their deceptive and misleading promos, they usually turned deaf ears to the NCC. She drew their attention to the the requirement that they give the regulator seven days notification before running any promo.

    Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Etisalat, Ibrahim Dikko said spam message form the bulk of unsolicited text messages that run on the networks of the telcos but agreed that more needed to be done in the area of giving consumers opportunity to opt in an opt out of vexatious VAS.

    He warned subscribers to be wary subscribing to services on their mobile phones without taking a second look, adding that this is partly responsible for the disappearance of consumers’ air time.

    Corporate Service Executive at MTN Akinwale Goodluck agreed with Dikko. According to him, a lot of the text messages that broke the sleep of customers were beyond the control of the telcos because they are internet-generated.

    According to him, gathering peoples’ data has become big time business as merchants pay desk attendants at functions to sell data collated about guests to them. He said this data are therefore used by all manner of people offering all manners of services to send bulk messages to people.

    He said another frightening dimension to the problem is that people buy bulk short message service (SMS) from Russia, Uzbekistan and others and dump them on the network of the telcos. He said the operators are complying with the strict regulation concerning bulk SMS.

    Dikko said the problem of drop calls is a combination of several factors. He cited a 15-storey building that suddenly emerged in a neighbourhood very close Etisalat’s BTS. He said the building led to network issues and forced the telco to relocate the BTS so that customers’ experience will not be degraded. He said people stroll with impunity to decommission and seal BTS, preventing access to the sites by people employed to keep it running.

    Goodluck lamented that artificial constraints were still being put on the way of roll out of infrastructure in the country. According to him, operators were still being prevented from laying optic fibre cables in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. He lamented that, three of the four telcos have the BTS switched off in Enugu State, adding that nobody dared walk into the facility of a power plant and vandalise it willfully yet, telecoms infrastructure is as critical and central to modern economic development as power infrastructure.

    Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Airtel Osondu Nwokoro said only advocacy can help address the problem.

    Participants at the even,t however, lamented the absence of consumers at a parliament described as consumers.

    “It is curious why the regulator decided to shut its doors against the consumers that are direct victims of the inadequacies of the operators. The outreach programme and town hall meetings Mrs Bayi is talking about is not as popular as the TCP. For instance, as educated as I am, I have never attended any of these two programmes. It is not because I don’t want to attend, it is because I have never heard information about when they will be held. I only get to see reports in the newspaper about the programmes after they must have been held. You will have noticed that the event was so dry, stale and colourless. It was so because the aggrieved subscribers that used to bring live into the proceedings were shut out,” one of the participants said.

  • Glo denies using substandard equipment

    Nigeria’s second national operator, Globacom said it does not patronise substandard telecoms equipment vendors, adding that it goes beyond the nod of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and do proper quality checks before buying equipment.

    Its Head, Business Support Group, Yomi Ogunbamowo, who spoke on the sideline while unveiling Glo Ringa, a product that allows customers to call friends, lovers, business partners and family members at a cheap rate, said the telco has completed its national network equipment upgrade, assuring that the network is now resilient enough to carry any traffic should there be any surge as a result of the launch of the product.

    He said the telco took its time to launch the product having satisfied that it will not lead to service quality degradation.

    “As a responsible and responsive operator, we have been upgrading our network in the last three months. We did this to precede the launch of this product. So degradation of service quality will not arise at all,” he said.

    He said the Glo Ringa a gesture further to the telco’s desire to ease the life of its customers, adding that it is another way of giving back to them, adding that the new product allows its 23 million subscribers to belong to the club of ‘family & friends’ and enjoy cheap call rates and designed to cushion the effects of spiraling cost-push inflation in the country that has seen the prices of essential goods and services sky-rocket.

    He said: “Glo Ringa allows all prepaid customers to make calls at cheap and competitive tariffs. It is designed to help build relationship and businesses. There’s inflation and we realise that prices of goods and services have been going up. So we decided to introduce it to cushion the effects of the inflation.

    “Like every other innovative products, we pioneered the friends & family. We have taken it to further heights by allowing all our 23 million customers to have an opportunity to benefit from the service by calling at 11kobo per second.”

    He further said the telco will continue to partner with relevant stakeholders to deliver superior services to its customers.

    According to him, the service will attract N250 weekly rental which he said is nothing when compared with the opportunity its offers the customers to make cheap calls.

  • Erratic power blamed for poor telecoms services

    Chinese telecoms equipment vendor, Huawei Technologies Limited has blamed erratic power supply from the national grid for the poor telecoms services in the country.

    He argued that as the power situation in the country improves with privatisation of the sector, things will get better.

    Its Managing Director, Nigeria, Mr Pang Jimin  who led senior management team of the firm on a courtesy visit to Vintage Press, publishers of The Nation newspapers and Sporting Life, said as telecoms equipment vendors with network optimisation agreements with all the operators in the country, the recurrent issue of poor quality of service (QoS) has nothing to do with its equipment but more of the challenges the nation is having with the power sector.

    Jimin dispelled the insinuation that Chinese firms were manufacturing substandard equipment and shipping them to Nigeria and other third world countries, adding that its products are universal in quality and in every ramification.

    He said: “I think one of the major issues is that you cannot compare this country with China or Europe, is power. In China, there is no power failure. Here there is always power failure and you know when one base transmission station (BTS) goes off, service quality will go down.”

    According to him, its range of mobile phones and other products are manufactured with no region or continent in mind, insisting that Huawei, as a global brand does not collude with unscrupulous elements to mass-produce substandard products and ship to the local market for gains.

    Speaking on its footprints in the country, Jimin said it is the only firm that has domiciled its Network Operating Centre (NOC) in the country, adding that others prefer to have theirs offshore. He said: “We have our NOC in this country to give back end support to users of our technology. We are the only technology firm that has NOC in this country; others have in Dubai or Egypt. We believe Nigeria deserves something in-house; something that will be manned by the Nigerian people here.

    “We have a very big screen in the NOC which helps us to monitor the performance of the network; we have a big demonstration office in Lagos where we come out with many solutions which we allow our customers to see. Others take customers to Europe or America for them to see. We also do software design and invest heavily in research and development.

    “We are a leading global information and communication technology company solutions provider. Through our dedication to customer-centric innovation and strong partnerships, we have established end-to-end capabilities and strengths across the carriers, enterprises and consumers by providing competitive ICT solutions and services. Our products and solutions have been deployed in over 140 countries, serving more than one third of the world’s population. We established regional training centre in Nigeria in 2006 where we train about 2000 local manpower every year; established a regional R&D centre, regional NOC, exhibition hall and planning the establishment of business process outsourcing (BPO) centre in Lagos.”

    He said the firm signed an agreement with the Ministry of Communications Technology to build a basal national ICT infrastructure backbone (NICTIB) for Galaxy Backbone which is aimed at allowing the government to attain higher level of management, accountability and efficiency and move closer to attaining the Vision 20:2020.

    He added that it was chosen by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to build the national emergency call centre (ECC) which cover all the states and allow people across the country access emergency response via the use of a unified mobile number.

  • NCS seeks digital approach to national challenges

    The Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) has urged the Federal Government to seek digital solutions to the multi-faceted challenges confronting the nation.

    Its President, Prof David Adewumi, said it is improper to deploy analogue technology in the digital age to proffer solutions to the social, economic and security challenges facing the country.

    Adewumi, who spoke on the sideline of a press conference held to announce its 25th National Conference slated for Nike Lake Hotel, Enugu, said the simple ubiquitous deployment of close circuit television (CCTvs) across the country could just be the game cahnger.

    He said: “We need a digital approach to solving all our problems in this country. though security issues are not supposed to be discussed on the pages of newspapers, I think the simplest example that could be drawn is the deployment of CCTvs across the country.

    “If a criminal commits a crime, it will easy to track the criminal down wherever he might go. All that is needed is just to play the video and that will be all. This technology has worked in other countries of the world. There is no reason for it to fail in this country.”

    He said this year’s conference theme will be Building a knowldeg-based economy in Nigeria: The role of Information Technology, adding that it underscores the vital role of IT in driving development in any  economy.

    He said: “NCS has always being at the forefront of new innovative engagements and the adaptation of cutting-edge technological solutions. We are committed to facilitating the deployment of digital and internet based technologies to not only drive improvements but to change and redirect our energy on how Nigeria’s economy is defined, organised and delivered.

    “We build thought leadership through emphasis on relevance and significance in using IT to enable inclusive and sustainable development. We are committed as a professional advocacy group to advancing the interests of the IT industry and profession and the nation as a whole.”