The Nation Newspaper

Category: e-Business

  • Subscribers’ Internet services blues

    Subscribers’ Internet services blues

    The coming of the internet turned the world into a global village. In realisation of this fact, Chief Executive Officer, SO4 Engineering, Soji Oluwasuyi, designs his works and sends to his clients in Port Harcourt, Bayelsa, Abuja and other parts of the country through the internet. He does this at a cybercafe in his neighbourhood until he was embarrassed by security men who claimed they were looking for advance fee fraudsters in the cybercafe. He promptly bought a modem valued at N4999 from one of the service providers and signed onto a data bundle plan of N6,000 monthly.

    “I needed to send a drawing to a client in Abuja. I tried several times to send the material but it was fruitless. I called my service provider to complain but was assured that my problem would be solved. The problem lingered for three days until I was forced to explore the cybercafe option in the adjoining street,” he said.

    Muyiwa, a Lagos based journalist has a similar story to tell. Muyiwa, who subscribers to the only surviving code division multpile access (CDMA) operator in the country, was upbeat when he got the modem. He was encouraged to buy the modem because his colleagues in the office had vouched for the integrity of the service provider.

    “I got the modem. Initially it was working but suddenly, its services went down. I was using the modem of one of the GSM operators. The problem I had with the GSM was that network can only be assessed in my office. And I like to work as much as I could from home but there is usually no network service in my area. So, my colleagues recommended this to me, I bought it only to get my fingers burnt,” he lamented.

    Oluwasuyi and Muyiwa are but few of several data subscribers in the country who subscribe to data plans, pay from their nostrils but never get the speed and bandwidth promised by the service providers.

    When there is outage due to no cause of the subscribers, they are usually not compensated for the downtime. Again, when subscribers take up bundle plans and buy a particular number of megabytes (megs) but due to low usage, they were not able to exhaust the meg, such megs are rarely rolled over when the subscribers renew the contract at the end of the contract terms. However, when a subscriber uses up the megs purchased, the operator does not blink an eye lid before snaping its services.

    President, National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Deolu Ogunbanjo, lamented the exploitative situation, adding that in an ideal setting, people should not pay for services not rendered.

    “It is worriosme. Unfortunately, between 80 and 90 per cent of complaints is for voice calls. Twelve years after the telecoms revolution, focus is still on voice clarity but because less than 20 per cent of subscribers actually get dongles, attention has not been on the quality of data services. From our findings, only one of out every ten complaints is about data services. Again, many subscribers now prefer phones that are internet-enabled, regardless of whether they are literate or not.

    “But it is worrisome because when you now complain, the operators will tell you that a committee has been set up on the implementation of the national broadband policy of the Federal Government. They will enjoin the subscriber to wait and things would get better,” he said.

    He said the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) should compel the operators to create a special icon on their website so that complaints could be lodged there. “NCC should encourage operators to put proper consumer management in place. It should not take an operator up to 24 hours to address subscriber’s complain but it takes weeks in the country,” he said.

    Telecoms operators agree that subscribers should not pay for services not rendered. President of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, said: “Subscribers should not be charged for unsused data subscription period. Charges should be based on actual consumption and not expiry dates. However, subscribers should pay attention to the details of the subscription that they make. Some of those details are stated in terms which most people either don’t read or do not understand if they read.”

    The Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) said the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) is another window of opportunity opened to the subscribers to ditch an ineffiecient operator. President of the group, Lanre Ajayi, agreed that subscribers have been having issues with the data services which have not been addressed. “The good thing is that there is MNP. The only limiting factor could be the terminal head of the dongle but what is common now are dongles with generic terminal. That means the only thing to change is the SIM card. Competition will enthrone quality service delivery,” he said.

    He advised subscribers to always read the terms of contract before siging it. According to him, it is not wise for a subscriber to agree to a term that allows him/her to forfeit his unused megabyte. “Then the NCC must keep deepening the competition space for the subscribers,” he said.

    President, Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Bayo Banjo, said unless the Federal Government steps in, subscribers will continue to graon. According to him, the cost of bandwidth is too high and only the rich can afford it. “The cost of badwidth is too expensive. Bandwidth is technically free but the cost of transportation. The Federal Government should subsidise the cost of bandwidth. It could use its amortised cable, SAT 3 or NigComSat to crash the high cost of bandwidth in the country,” he said, adding that in South Korea, internet is free except in homes.

    “What the companies are doing is that they are sharing. Service will remain bad because the average Nigerian cannot afford the cost of bandwidth. That is the cause. Government should subsidise bandwidth so that when the customer base becomes large, there will be economies of scale. MainOne has promised that if it attains certain level of volume, it would bring the cost of one meg to $25 per month which translates to N3000 for one meg. The firm needs that volume, so what people are doing now, if you look at Mobitel, Spectranet, they are giving you one meg at 10,000 per month but in truth, it is really not one meg they are giving. That explains why you have the slow speed,” he said.

    An operator, who craved anonymity, said the harsh operating environment has added to the woes of the telecoms sector. According to him, cables are wilfully vandalised by people who feel they could make money out of the copper which is not there. He said businesses have to pay for two optic fibre cables (OFCs) so that they could have redundant capacities, adding that in most cases, the two cables get vandalised. “At Saka Tinubu, OFCs were damaged due to ongoing road construction. Services would naturally be disrupted. The cost of energy is another crushing cost. We spend heavily on running generators. The Federal Government continues to make empty promises about the power sector. So, it is really challenging doing business in Nigeria,” he said.

    MyBrodaband defined the internet as the worldwide interconnection of individual networks operated by government, industry, academia, and private parties. Originally, the Internet served to interconnect laboratories engaged in government research, and since 1994 it has been expanded to serve millions of users and a multitude of purposes in all parts of the world.

  • NCC, NBC to collaborate on digital broadcasting

    NCC, NBC to collaborate on digital broadcasting

    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) have pledged to work together to realise the 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to complete migration from analogue to digital broadcasting.

    They also resolved to explore ways of resolving issues that have to do with frequency allocation before such issues get escalated to the attention of the Frequency Management Council (FMC), a body which both bodies belong. This move, they say, will enable them to deliver the dividends of modern technology to the Nigerian people.

    The agencies reached agreement when NBC’s Director General, Emeka Mba, visited NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman Eugene Juwah, in Abuja.

    Congratulating Mba on his appointment, Juwah said: “We – NCC and NBC – have always been sister regulators and our roles will become more intertwined because of development in technology. These days it’s either you broadcast through the internet or through the other traditional channels that we were used to.’’

    He noted that the importance of the regulatory responsibilities of the two agencies makes it over-riding for them to always look for avenues of cooperation so that important issues can be resolved before being escalated to platforms like the, which they both belong to.

    Juwah said it was important for the two bodies to work towards achieving the transition timeline which he said the country was running out of time to achieve.

    “It is not a question of fighting for turf but to do things properly so that people can know that we are working well in Nigeria for the good of those who need our services,’’ Juwah was quoted as saying in a statement.

    Mba agreed with Juwah that technology was shrinking the two agencies into one, adding that the development has made it more imperative that they synergise.

    Mba said: “We have to find ways to work together for the benefits of the Nigerian consumers. There is the need to work together, not just work together but to build more respect for one another, and develop stronger relationship. Because more and more, as we go forward with digitisation and what this new ecosystem will bring for the sector, you will find telcos who want to be broadcasters and broadcasters who want to be telecos. The two agencies share very unique responsibilities together.

    While we deal with content, programming in the broadcast sector, you will agree that technology is muddling the differences, bringing the two industries together.’’

    Mba also noted that as the country pursues the digitisation process, it has become more expedient for the two agencies to create stronger bonds so as to overcome every hurdle on the way, stressing that the future of the two industries will not be about frequency but about quality service to the consumers.

  • Here comes pill for high business cost

    To cut the costs of doing business; some firms, including telecoms giants, are building their own data centres. LUCAS AJANAKU writes on the benefits and challenges of the concept.

    He is determined to reduce operating cost (Opex) by about 50 per cent. To actualise his dream, his firm is building a data centre in Agbara, Ogun State.

    Chief Executive Officer of Venema Advies Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the Venema Advies Group, Dick Venema, said energy expenditures account for almost 80 per cent of firms’ information communications technology (ICT) Opex.

    He said: “The cost saving is achieved from a company’s own in-house infrastructure. A firm can reduce its cost by between 40 and 50 per cent because, first of all, it is shared power. That is, infrastructure is shared, culminating in reduction in energy cost.

    He stressed, ‘’in Nigeria, it is estimated that power accounts for about 80 per cent of operating costs. So, in the data centre, everybody shares power facilities. Everybody shares UPS and the broadband facilities. Ultimately, this dovetails into substantial redution in cost. Indeed, the cost saving element could be more than 40-50 per cent,” he said.

    Like a damned river suddenly losing its fetters, international IT firms are opening up data centres in the country.Vodacom Nigeria Business, Business Connexion, telecoms firms such as Globacom, MTN and other firms have opened data centre shops. Even those not having data centres in the country such as Oracle Corporation have offshore data centres where their clients in the country host their data.

    A data centre, according to Wikipedia, is “a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (such as air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices.”

    According to experts, the future of data market in Nigeria will develop fast, especially when it is considered that the economy is growing at six per cent yearly. Its market will grow twice that number. Though it is a foreign technology, Nigerians are gaining more knowledge about it. The market will grow by about 12 per cent yearly and in the next five years, it will notch between 60-70 per cent.

    But it’s cumbersome to put a figure to how much the technology will add to the national gross domestci product (GDP).

    “It is pretty difficult to say because everything is so concentrated on the data centre. It is not known how many people will start programming mobile application because it is now available in Nigeria. It is difficult to calculate how much the data business will add to the GDP but around that technology, people from all over Nigeria will start programming application and earn money. It is difficult to estimate the number but this will be in several hundreds of million of dollars,” he told The Nation.

    He said data centres will continue to be at the heart of businesses as email, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programme and everybody settles online. Nigeria has about 119 million mobile phone subscribers. With the expansion in the subscriber number is also the expansion in mobile braodband as people move their lives, from wallet (mobile money) to e-health, e-education and others to their mobile phones.

    “Everybody is busy with one’s traditional system server and in-house devices. This will change radically. The growth of mobile devices, mobile telephony (remember that the total connected mobile telephone lines in Nigeria is about 120 million, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)).

    ‘’This is a tremendous growth opportunity for data centre business. Tied to this is the boom in mobile internet and the rising market of mobile applications developers,” the data centre expert said, adding that the push of the Communications Technology Ministry at building software incubation centres in the country would also add a fresh fillip to the boom in data centres in the country.

    According to a senior banker, banks have been facing financial difficulty in building data centres. “To build a data centre, we will need a minimum of N300million. What the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is encouraging us to do is infrastructure sharing. In Spain, I saw a massive data centre built which all the banks are sharing,” the bank chief said.

    Another variant of data centre services is cloud data centre. It is constructed for a different purpose; created at a different time than the traditional data center and built to a different scale.

    The cloud data centre has different costs than the traditional data center (such as buying land and construction).

    Group Executive, Business Development, Director BCX Group, John Jenkins, said the uptake of the technology in the country is improving.

    “We were surprised to see very significant demand for cloud services in large enterprise customers. Larger Nigerian enterprises are clearly leapfrogging their lethargic global competitors by going directly to cloud based IT service models and not taking the traditional long voyage to cloud adoption,” he said.

    He said the technology is built on IT infrastructure, virtualisation tools and automation applications and of course the Internet. “So, if Nigeria is willing to get behind cloud services in a way that they take the lead in West Africa and further, Nigeria will develop world-class network engineers, systems integrators and application developers. I cannot see why Nigeria cannot compete globally when it has the right location, lots of entrepreneurship, submarine cable bandwidth, competitive labour rates and a supportive government and labour legislation,” he said.

    But security has been an issue for these technologies. Opinions are divided over thie matter.

    Jenkins said: “All of the same threats still exist, malware and phishing attacks among others, for which companies must deploy security solutions to defend against. Still, this doesn’t mean that data security should be completely ignored when migrating.

    “The justified concern about security stems from the fact that most providers are Internet Service Providers and free services companies who enable IT services where security is the responsibility of the client.”

    Venema said security does not have to be a problem as long as the appropriate decisions from the engineering phase to the execution of the data centre are taken.

    “You have to calculate risks. But essentially for our data centre, physical security is the most important for the people we will host their services. It is important that they develop resilient security system so that all online transaction will be protected.

    ‘’I advise banks and other fianancial institutions to look to the PCID system certfification. I advise Nigerian programmers to take the issue of security seriously in the course of designing their programmes. There is enough information now availalble for people to write secure software and deploy secure payment system. So, I think Nigeria can make the difference,” he said.

    Former Country Manager, Micorosoft Anglophone West Africa, Emmanuel Onyeje, and Oracle Corporation, Country Manager, Layo Ajayi, argue said there is no need to fear. He added that as long as people open email addresses and use same platfrom and exchange information, there is a measure of data storage in the virtual space.

    But as operators scramble to build more data centres, Venema warns: “Location is very important in building data centre. During an extensive risk analysis, you will see that not every location is suitable for a data centre. For instance, Lekki in Lagos is flood-prone. Sometimes it is just not good enough to be very close to the city.”

    He blamed the telcos for investing in data centre businesses, saying they lack the technical know-how to run them.

  • Poor services: Group seeks N5000 compensation for subscribers

    The National Association of Telecoms Susbcribers (NATCOM) has written to the Association of Licensed Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ALTON) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) seeking N5,000 compensation for subscribers over low quality services.

    President of NATCOMS Deolu Ogunbanjo said about 12 years after the global system for mobile (GSM) communications made its debut, the operators were not offering services commensurate to the profit they are making.

    The letter addressed to the chairman of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, and copied NCC’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Eugene Juwah, said the operators had failed to provide efficient services to subscribers.

    In a swift reaction, Adebayo described the letter as a clear manifestation of the ignorance of NATCOMS about the dynamics of the industry.

    Adebayo, who spoke with The Nation, said the NATCOMS president failed to take into cognisance the operating environment.

    “We are looking at the letter. But my first impulse is that the letter appears to show that NATCOMS which claims to represent the interest of the subscribers does not understand the dynamics and reality of the operating environment. Regulation and infrastructure are part of the harsh operating environment. Asking for N5000 compensation for the subscribers at this time shows clearly that NATCOMS does not realise the dynamics of these factors,” he said.

    In the letter, NATCOMS said: “The introduction of GSM in Nigeria in 2001 has brought about positive changes for individuals, corporate organisations, government at all levels and the country at large. It has saved thousands of lives in emergency, created and still creating jobs, eased communications within families, work places and across nations. It has brought Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) and boosted the nation’s Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” NATCOMS noted.

    In spite of these advantages, the group said “the quality of service (QoS) profile that describes the performance evaluation of the system from the consumer perspective, using specific parameters has been poor.” NATCOMS identified these services parameters as call failure rate, call drop rate, call set-up rate, call completion rate, billing accuracy, voice quality, network outages/downtimes, spectrum efficiency, international roaming, traffic channel congestion, and others, arguing that the operators have failed to deliver on all.

    Some of the operators’ network deficiencies include “dialing a number between five and 10 times before getting connected /not-connected, dialing several times and still getting a ‘call failed’ message, moving from one place to the other in search of network signal before receiving or making calls,” adding that a subscriber would be lucky if both caller and recipient hear each other without voice-breaks. “Often times, the caller /recipient may hear the recipient /caller, while the caller /recipient cannot hear. Yet this incomplete call is paid for,” the letter read.

  • Why public communication project was delayed, by chinese firm

    Chinese equipment vendor, ZTE, has said the National Public Service Communication System (NPSCS) was not completed on schedule because of difficulties in getting land for the erection of base transmission stations (BTS) and problems with Customs.

    Deputy Managing Director, ZTE Nigeria Limited, Brielle Gao, said during a visit to the Matori, Lagos Corporate office of Vintage Press Ltd, publishers of The Nation that it was a relief the project has now been delivered to the government. The project, she added, has helped to provide answers to some security questions in the country.

    “We are buidling a completely secure security platform for the Federal Government across the nation. The project has about 700 BTS as component. The BTS will provide the platform for the whole country. The implementation was slightly delayed because of issues on securing land for the BTS and customs. The contract was awarded by the Federal Government and it has been handed over to the government,” she said.

    Gao dispelled insuinations that the security solutions installed by the firm in the country were of obsolete technology, adding that over the years, ZTE has built a reputation for providing security solutions to more than 40 countries across the world. She said the allegation was baseless as there is no evidence to substantiate the claim.

    “ZTE is a global security solutions provider. One of our best selling solutions is the security solutions we provide to the world. This system is called the global trunkey system. It has been sucessfully implemented in more than 40 countries around the world including Nigeria. ZTE is worried about the misinformation making the rounds about the quality of our solutions. We may be forced to take legal action against those peddling the rumour because they don’t have the evidence but just spreading rumours all over the town.

    “All the solutions that we have provided for Nigeria is the same provided all over the world in recent time. In China, it is the same thing. If you go to Ghana, Senegal and some other African countries where we have this security communications project, all the projects are the same,” she said.

  • ‘Multiple tax regime hurting investment in IT sector’

    Operators in the information communications technology (ICT) sector have called on the Federal Government to come out with a unified tax policy to stimulate further flow of investment into the economy.

    They also want government at all levels to streamline the process of grantng right of way (RoW) to telecoms companies so that capacities could be boosted and service quality improved.

    These are some of the decisions arrived at during the roundtable discussions organised by the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) to chat a way for successful implementation of the National Brodaband Plan 2013-2018, at Golden Gate Restaurant, Ikoyi, Lagos over the weekend.

    President of ATCON, Lanre Ajayi, said there was need to have a unified tax policy regime in place so that prospective investors would be confident to invest on the infrastructure needed to improve broadband availability and depth in the country.

    The forum also unanimously agreed that the funding policy of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) should be made more flexible because under the current dispensation, operators hardly get funding from the agency. The agency was advised to shift its focus away from award of contracts. He added that the Fund was not addressing the operations expenditure (opex) but capital expenditure (capex) of services providers.

    ATCON also stressed the need for the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to put mechanisms in place to encourage the sharing of optic fibre cables by the operators instead of each struggling to dig and lay theirs.

    “The Connect Nigeria Fund should provide money for people that want to roll out brodaband services. The Federal Government should also grant tax holidays to firms that wish to provide broadband services as it did for global system for mobile (GSM) communications operators while the NCC must step up action against anti-competitive practices,” ATCON said.

  • We can’t ‘port’, subscribers lament

    Subscribers are finding it difficult to move to networks of their choice under the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) introduced three months ago by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

    They alleged that some ‘big’ telecoms operators are frustrating them from porting to networks where they could get better services.

    They said the donor operators were disallowing them of porting after several futile attempts to do so.

    A subscriber, who identified himself simply as Tolu, said he had made several attempts to ‘port’, lamenting that he was always told to hold on.

    “I have been to the office of my recipient-operator several times to fill the form and get the porting process kick-started, but it has always been frustrated as the donor-operator who is one of the big players in the industry will not let me go. My grouse with the operator is that each time I load my phone, my ‘credit’ gets wiped off without making any calls. The worst is the freebies they give. When I loaded my phone on Saturday, I was given a ‘credit’ twice the amount I loaded. I did not use one-tenth of all the ‘credit’ only to wake up the following day with empty credit,” he said.

    Chief Operating Officer, Interconnect Clearing House Nigeria Limited, Uche Onwudiwe, said while he could not comment on MNP’s success, he could not rule out the possibility of donor operators refusing to release subscribers wishing to opt out of their networks.

    Interconnect Clearing House is the link between the subscriber, the donor operator and recipeint-operator. It reports to the NCC.

    Onwudiwe said if any subscriber has difficulty in ‘porting’, he should contact the NCC via a short message service (SMS) and do a follow-up.

    “The donor-operator may want to frustrate people from leaving their network. If this happens, the appropriate thing to do is to complain to the NCC. The NCC is looking at putting in place sanctions to deter any operator from stopping people on its network from porting,” he said.

    According to him, the recipient network could also contact the interconnect clearing house so to assist in doing the follow-up on the issue with the regulator.

    Calls made to the Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Tony Ojobo, were not picked.

    NCC Executive Vice Chairman Dr Eugene Juwah, promised to sanction any defaulting operator.

    According to him, MNP has been identified as one service that would further deepen the competition in the telecoms market, adding that with the growing reliance and dependence on mobile communications for everyday socio-economic interactions, the scheme will give freedom to subscribers.

    “The vision of the commission is not only to provide access to telecommunication services to Nigerians at affordable cost but to also to continue to provide the required stimulus and appropriate environment for the introduction of innovative services that will impact on quality telecoms service delivery.

    “Our mobile subscriber numbers have become our identity and in most cases, we are required to provide our mobile (telephone) numbers while filling out forms in opening bank accounts, making hotel and airline bookings,” Juwah said during the launch of the MNP scheme in Lagos on April 22.

  • Google, ASUS partner on tablet

    ASUS and Google have unveiled a new tablet in Nigeria. It is called the Nexus 7, a 7-inch Android device with tablet screen and built-in wireless charging that eliminates the need for clumsy power cable connections.

    According to a statement, ASUS Chairman, Jonney Shih, said: “After the success of the first Nexus 7, we are very excited to continue our partnership with Google with this new model. The new Nexus 7 puts the very latest mobile technology in users’ hands and sets a new benchmark for tablets.”

    Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, Sundar Pichai, said: “Together with ASUS, we took what you loved about the original Nexus 7 and made it even better. It is now thinner, lighter and faster, with the world’s highest resolution screen in a seven-inch tablet. Whether you are sitting at home, in a coffee shop or at the airport, the new Nexus 7 is powerful, portable and made for what matters to you.”

    According to Google, with a vibrant, seven-inch full high definition (HD) display packed with more than 2.3 million pixels for a stunning 323ppi (pixels-per-inch), the new Nexus 7 brings apps, games, books and movies to vivid life with unparalleled image quality. ASUS TruVivid technology improves color clarity and brightness, while IPS display technology gives ultra-wide 178-degree viewing angles.

  • Lagos embraces R&D for growth

    Lagos State government plans to drive economic growth through research and development (R&D).

    Chairman, Lagos Research and Development Council (LRDC), Prof. Olufemi Bamiro, said at a R&D workshop for stakeholders that the government would do everything to promote R&D.

    The event, which was organised by the LRDC brought together stakeholders from government, academia, research and development agency, non-government organisations (NGO) and the organised private sector.

    Bamiro said the establishment of the council is a demonstration of the resolve of the state to provide support for basic and applied research, and most importantly commercialisation, which in itself, is a key mission of the Lagos Innovation Project (INNOVATELAGOS).

    “Of equal interest to the council is support for institutions of higher learning in the performance of their key functions of teaching, research and community service geared towards the production of human capital to drive the State’s economy,” he said.

    He added that through a globally tested and trusted strategic collaborative model referred to as Triple Helix Model, comprising the government, academia, research and development agency, NGO and the organised private sector, the focus of the Council is to become an instrument for the transformation of Lagos State into an innovative and knowledge-driven economy.

    He said like the South African government did, the Lagos State government is bringing about strategic collaboration among small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), academia, and research agencies to foster the industrialisation of the state.

    Lagos Governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), was represeneted on the occasion by his Special Adviser on Education, Mr Fatai Olukoga.

    He said: “Nigeria’s future economic growth will increasingly have to come from innovation in products services and business models. This is why innovation has been placed at the heart of the Lagos Project for growth and jobs.”

  • Etisalat names finalists in Geek Force contest

    Etisalat Nigeria has unveiled the Top 10 Finalists of its Geek Force Internship contest in what the telco said is an opportunity for innovative citizens of the country to join its workforce.

    Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr Steven Evans, who spoke at the event in Lagos, explained that the contest which focuses on two core areas of innovation and customer satisfaction is another idea from the telecoms company, adding that it came about as a result of its commitment to provide a platform to help in the development of career opportunities in a creative and exciting way.

    He said the five winners of the contest, which started as an online competition designed to recruit innovative and technologically savvy individuals, will have the opportunity of one year paid internship with Etisalat Nigeria.

    The 10 competitors include Peter Ndirpaya, Habib Lawal, David Alozie, Victor Alayande, Muyiwa Iyowu, Onyemaechi Okafor, Okon Etim, Tajinere Sagay, Gbenga Olaoye and Valentine Ubalua.