ICTworks by Inveneo

MainOne is driving change in Africa, starting from West Africa

Competition is good. It not only keeps prices down but also keeps innovation up. For close to a decade, SAT3 (a submarine cable system) was the lone player in the fibre internet connectivity marketplace for West Africa. Things have changed in recent times.

The commercial launch of MainOne (another submarine cable system that currently connects Ghana & Nigeria to Europe) is rapidly changing internet connectivity in Ghana and Nigeria. With 10 times more capacity than SAT3, MainOne is poised to shake-up internet connectivity in West Africa. Already, the revolution has began.

The MainOne Cable is owned by MainOne Cable Company Mauritius; a pan-African company that has built a private sector led international telecommunications highway between West Africa and the rest of the world, via Portugal. With fibre optic cable licenses in Nigeria and Ghana, MainOne is aiming to be the preferred wholesale international bandwidth provider in Africa.

Since the commercial launch of MainOne in July 2010, the market especially in Nigeria has been witnessing a drastic improvement. For a start, the following Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Nigeria have connected to the MainOne submarine cable system: ipNX, MTN, Netcom, etisalat, Starcomms, Galaxy Backbone, Vdt Communications and Swift Network. The ISPs are now able to offer improved connectivity to their clients.

Steven Evans, CEO of Etisalat Nigeria, had this to say about Etisalat’s connection to MainOne in July 2010:

“submarine fibre optic cable will enhance Etisalat’s broadband capacity thus leading to improved data services to the benefit of our customers. Our subscription to the new technology is a demonstration of our commitment to delivery of superior service, which we are known for globally. Our customers remain the core of our business hence we are always keen to deploy the best technology available for their advantage.”

The changes have not been limited to improved connectivity alone. The tariffs are already dropping.
MTN, the biggest telecommunications network in Nigeria that offers internet connectivity nationwide using varying technologies, has recently been announcing reduction in its internet connection tariffs for its mobile users. MTN has not only reduced its pricing, but has also increased the data limits on its data bundles by up to 40% whilst introducing new Weekend and Daytime data plans. MTN’s BlackBerry users have not been left out of the party. MTN recently announced a new “promotional” tariff cut via SMS:

You can now stay connected on your BlackBerry for less. MTN offers you BIS weekly for N1,000 & BIS monthly for N3,000

Things are taking shape albeit slowly, in Ghana as well. Ecoband offers connectivity solutions to ISPs and Data Network Operators in West Africa, from its base in Accra Ghana. The company recently connected to MainOne and announced in late October 2010:

Ecoband activated STM-1 service on the new MainOne submarine fibre optic cable connecting Nigeria and Ghana with the Internet backbone in Europe. This makes Ecoband the first ISP and data network operator in Ghana to benefit from the new state of the art technology deployed by the MainOne Cable Company connecting Ghana with under 100ms RTT delay to Europe.

Some 3 ISPs in Ghana make use of Ecoband’s connectivity solutions: BusyInternet, MTN, and Teledata ICT. Though tariff cuts have not been announced, subscribers of any of the ISPs can already experience the improved connectivity. It is to be noted that BusyInternet has been advertising an “improved capacity” on Facebook.com in recent times, targetted at residents of Ghana, in a bid to earn more of the market pie.

The operators of SAT3 submarine cable in Ghana have already reacted to the threat poised by MainOne, by reducing their pricing by as much as 53%. In a report recently published by Business & Financial Times (B&FT):

The National Communication Backbone Company (NCBC) has reduced the wholesale prices at which it sells international and national bandwidth capacity to Internet Service Providers (ISP) by half as other international bandwidth providers enter the market, B&FT has gathered. NCBC, which manages the SAT3 on behalf of Vodafone and the national broadband fibre-optic cable, has since the beginning of this month dropped the US$4,500 price tag at which it sells el (2megabites) to ISPs to US$2,100.

Additionally, the average national bandwidth price has also dropped by about 53% amidst fears the existing carriers may lose customers ahead of the new cables landing in the country. The reductions follow an announcement by MainOne Cable, a new entrant to the international bandwidth market, that it sells the same capacity of e1 for US$1,050.

As more ISPs join the MainOne submarine cable system, one only can expect market forces to push down the cost of Internet connectivity in West Africa since there is now much more bandwidth to go round.

This was originally published as Internet Connectivity in West Africa: How MainOne is driving competition

.ng is the country-code Top Level Domain (cc-TLD) for Nigeria. In plain English, it is Nigeria’s domain name system that identifies websites related to Nigeria. It is currently available for registration only in the following variants, with most of them being restricted to Nigerian entities:

1. com.ng – open domain, commercial entities and businesses
2. org.ng – semi-open domain, non-commercial organizations
3. gov.ng – governmental organizations
4. edu.ng – degree awarding institutions
5. net.ng – ISP infrastructure
6. sch.ng – Secondary Schools
7. name.ng – open domain
8. mobi.ng – open domain, suitable for mobile devices
9. biz.ng – open domain, suitable for all types of businesses
10. mil.ng – closed domain (Nigerian Military Establishments only)

I threw this question open recently via Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz: Would you use a .ng domain name for your website? Why? The responses were varied and interesting. Find a few of them below:

yes o! cause it makes it truly nigerian

No, won’t like to be associated with fraud.

I would use .ng, but I would not use .com.ng or .net.ng

Yeah, cause I be Omo Nija and I am Incredibly Proud

Not until I can use it without .com or .org in front of it.

Lotsa creative sites can come with that domain, bi.ng. weddi.ng etc

Possibly though I’ll be afraid Nigeria’s bad reputation would affect the traffic at my site

I am unable to name the respondents nor link to their respective comments since I did not plan to re-publish their comments and thus did not advise them earlier.

It is interesting that those who would use a .ng domain would do so out of pride in their national identity whilst those against .ng would stay away out of fear for the poor reputation Nigeria has over the Internet. Another angle are those who wish they could register .ng domains directly at the 2nd-level. Examples: lovi.ng, cari.ng etc.

It is time to open-up the debate and educate ourselves. Would YOU use a .ng domain name for YOUR website? If yes, why? If no, why not? Feel free to share your views in the comments area. If you are a blogger, feel to respond through your own blog post. Notify me and I would link to your blog post.

This post was originally published as Would you use a .ng domain name for your website? Why?

I was attracted by the headline of a news report on 234next.com: Commission to tackle kidnapping with technology

The spate of kidnapping in the country can be curtailed by embracing the use of telecommunications technology. The acting vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) expressed this view yesterday, following the release of the four recently abducted journalists.

Bashir Gwandu, addressing chief executives of the GSM, CDMA, and other major network operating companies in Abuja, lamented that kidnapping has become a serious threat to lives and businesses in Nigeria over the last one year, especially in the South-East and South-South zones of the country.

Mr. Gwandu said that "with just about 1000 naira, a multitude of crimes can be committed by purchasing multiple sim cards and misused them to threaten others via voice or text messages, and also commit other phone-assisted crimes. This has to stop."

Holding a person against his/her will is a criminal offence anywhere. Kidnapping is a despicable act. Having said that, let's analyse Bashir Gwandu's further statements.

He said the NCC has "plans to issue subsidy to telecommunications operators to install equipment on every mast and tower that could be used for triangulating between sites in order to identify real-geographical location of both GPS and None GPS-enabled mobile handsets."

Google Maps for mobile can already generate estimated location coordinates of mobile phones that have it installed, without relying on special equipment.

Assuming NCC can really pull that off, what happens to the privacy of mobile phone users? Did they sign-up for their movements to be tactically monitored by telecom operators? Why does anything need to be installed anyway when existing cell masts can already be used to triangulate the estimated location of any mobile phone (GPS-capable or not)? Google Maps already uses cell mast triangulation for its Google Map for Mobile service. Is this "subsidy" another plot to squander tax payers' money?

Mr. Gwandu stated that in addition to the triangulation project, all GPS-enabled handsets can also be tracked by low earth orbit satellites. He further stated that there are other equipment that could be deployed to tract and identify the locations of handsets being used to solicit for ransom.

This is ludicrous. Telecom operators are now law enforcement agencies. Even if the NCC was allowed to implement this absurdity, how would they access the GPS coordinates of a mobile phone since the GPS feature needs to be explicitly activated by the phone user before the phone can be tracked?

Do they plan to hack phones and turn on GPS on the phones remotely? Or, are they counting on phone users to voluntarily leave their GPS feature on all the time? By the way, GPS drains phone batteries. Tracking keeps the phone's microprocessor very busy and so consumes a lot of energy.

According to him, "once ownership of numbers can be identified, handsets can be tracked, and their geographical location becomes identifiable, then any call made to solicit for ransom will help to locate the kidnappers."

I can't help laughing. Hardened criminals like kidnappers would voluntarily register their SIM cards with their real personal details in other to make the job of law enforcement easy. Too bad, we live in a real world where that fantasy is hardly possible.

In addition to this, NCC has initiated a project that will block stolen handsets once they are reported as being stolen. The project will also be helpful in stopping criminals from using snatched handsets in perpetrating such act.

How many times are we going to read things like this? Haven't we heard this before? How many times does the NCC want to attempt blocking stolen phones? Is it not the exact responsibility of the phone owner to promptly report a stolen phone to the service provider for the SIM to be promptly deactivated? A country that cannot generate adequate power supply, that cannot hold free & fair elections, that cannot properly conduct a population census now wants to track and block mobile phones. How noble!

It is very obvious that the acting boss of NCC is pulling this stunt, to create an impression on the Nigerian public that he is very competent and on top of his game. Whilst I would not question his competence, this particular act can only be counter-productive in any enlightened society since such information (useful or not) is best shared directly with the law enforcement agencies.

The Nigeria Police, the State Security Service (SSS), the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) etc, are the best to be tutored on technology meant for tracking criminals and NOT the head of telecom companies who already understand the technologies (else, why would they be in business?) nor the media.

This post was originally published as Nigerians, NCC wants to track your movement.

When last did you visit a cyber cafe?

Eight years ago, my answer would have been “right now”. I would have been writing/reading this on a computer in a cyber cafe. Right now however, I am lying somewhere comfortable in my home, whilst punching the soft keys on my laptop.

A few years ago in Accra, one could count more than ten Internet cafes between Vodafone (then Ghana Telecom)’s Head Office around Kwame Nkrumah Circle and BusyInternet on Ring Road Central. There were: True Internet, WWWPlus Mega Cafe, Krofa Internet Cafe, Java Internet Cafe, and several others, whose names I do not remember at this time.

Sadly, most of them have closed shop. Whilst several reasons could be offered for the failure of these enterprises, one cannot overlook the solid impact of mobile phones and mobile internet technologies.

My facebook profile on a Nokia smartphone

Mobile Websites

A quick glance at the traffic metrics website Alexa.com reveals that the most visited websites in Ghana include: Facebook, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Live.com, Wikipedia, MSN, GhanaWeb, BBC. Email used to be the most popular online activity in this part of the world but social networking websites seem to have taken the lead in recent times. News websites come third. Thus, the composition of the ten most popular websites is not much of a surprise.

What is more interesting is that ALL the most popular websites have mobile versions of their services. Typing facebook.com into a mobile web browser for example, automatically redirects one to a mobile version of the popular social networking website. The mobile websites are stripped-down versions but offer a lot of functionality, in a layout small enough to fit into tiny mobile phone screens. It is thus now common place to find people get busy with chatting, twittering, reading the news & more, from their mobile phones.

Smartphones

Smartphones are raising the stakes and pushing more possibilities into our hands, literally. They now have enough processing power to stream high-definition video and enough memory to download and store databases of music, photos and videos from the Internet. Some smartphones come with full QWERTY keyboards and thus making typing a pleasure. Emailing, blogging, chatting can now be done virtually anywhere.

Lower entry costs

Personal Computers are no longer the exclusive preserve of the rich and well-educated. 10 years ago, the pricing of an average laptop was about $2,000. Not any more. New, more powerful, full-featured laptops are available today for as low as $700. Their smaller cousins (netbooks) even come at lower prices; mwave.com currently prices an ASUS EPC900B-BLU01X Eee netbook PC at only $209.99

Used and probably refurbished PCs even drag the entry costs lower, for obvious reasons.

USB Modems

Those little devices have further democratised internet connectivity. Where mobile phones and smartphones are not enough, one could easily buy a USB Modem for as low as 60 Ghana Cedis (about $42) and connect it to a desktop, laptop or netbook for a full Internet experience. MTN Ghana is currently offering their USB modem at that price. Gone are the days when one needed to obtain a hard-to-comeby fixed phone line from the telecom monopoly or a fixed wireless antenna pointed at the Internet Service Provider’s radio mast, or a VSAT satellite dish + modem. None of these came cheap.

The more spectacular thing is that 3.5G USB modems offer real broadband speeds today.

Back to those cyber cafes. The rapid closure of cyber cafes is not limited to Ghana. 234Next.com, a leading Nigerian news source, today published a report titled: Cyber cafes are vanishing:

"In those days, around 2000 and 2001, I used to go to cyber cafe, pay money to check my yahoo email. You know the feeling that time was powerful. I was the only one who could browse amongst my friends then. We will go to a cyber cafe and crowd around one system, five of us, and then the systems were always very slow, so if we hear that one cyber cafe somewhere was fast we will go there," said Solomon Edema, a computer engineer. "Now, all of us browse with our phones. I also used my laptop. I have not gone to a cyber cafe for over a year now," Mr. Edema, adds.

Nowadays, the proliferation of computers and 3G mobile phones, including the famous China phones, has resulted in cheaper prices. As a result more people can afford internet-enabled phones. Similarly, the competition in the telecom industry has also led the telecom firms out-doing one another in offering cheap modems and internet access. Traders at Computer Village, Ikeja, now offer software that enable free internet access on laptops and mobile phones.

It is clear that mobile phones, are pushing cyber cafes out, the same way public phone booths and “communication centres” have become endangered species. What waits to be seen is how long the few cyber cafes that remain would last. Would they close shop or evolve their business model? Time would tell.

I was perplexed at The 3 Reasons Why Kenya is Beating Nigeria in Internet Business Opportunities. Could the author Wayan Vota simply be courting controversy as a means of drawing traffic to the blog? I will attempt to review the reasons listed in the blog post as to why the author is of the view that Kenya leads Nigeria in Internet Business opportunities.

1. Safaricom

Safaricom? When did Safaricom start offering Internet connectivity over a 3.5G network? Only recently. As at the last time I was in Kenya (February 2010), Safaricom was still offering a special promotion of unlimited Internet access for only 9,999 Kenyan shillings with each subscription lasting only a week. The promo was obviously a means of raising awareness on its new 3.5G network.

In contrast, MTN Nigeria has been offering super-fast Internet over 3.5G since the 2nd quarter of 2008. In addition, Zain and Glo Mobile both offer super-fast Internet using 3.5G technology covering all the top cities in Nigeria.

Nigeria may have more mobile phone players, and cheaper voice rates, but their 3G data services are no where near the quality and reach of Safaricom.

I used Safaricom’s mobile broadband service in Nairobi and Mombosa and frankly speaking, I have experienced faster Internet in Nigeria and Ghana. Safaricom’s service is no where near excellent. It disconnected intermittently and I had reconnect manually on several occasions. I have been too busy since I got back to publish a detailed review based on about 14 days of using Safaricom’s mobile broadband.

An AccessKenya Fibre ad on a road in Nairobi Kenya

2. Seacom & Teams

Yeah. Seacom alone is a big deal. The hotel I lodged in Mombasa offers Internet connectivity using Swift Global. Swift Global is linked to Seacom. The speed was simply wickedly fast. Seacom was launched July 2009 and currently has an operational capacity of 100 Gbit/s. Considering Kenya (and the whole of East Africa) got their first taste of real Internet only recently, they still have some catching-up to do compared to their West African cousins.

Nigeria’s telecom sector is years behind. Yes, the Glo cable is coming, but with the current restrictive regulation, I bet it will still be cheaper for Nigerian companies to buy bandwidth microwaved over from Benin.

Really? The assertion by Wayan is highly inaccurate. Nigeria is presently the leading telecoms market in Africa with the most liberal telecom regime where several players are digging it in a highly competitive & dynamic market using various technologies. Nigeria is where GSM meets CDMA. Where 3.5G knocks head with EV-DO. Nigeria’s telecom not only offers a big basket of flexible options but is also the biggest in Africa.

SAT-3 WASC route

Nigeria has been served by the SAT-3 cable (whether directly or via Benin Republic is inconsequential in this context) since 2002. SAT-3 has a capacity of 120 Gbit/s; however, plans are in place to nearly triple SAT-3’s capacity to 340 Gbit/s soon thanks to technological advancements allowing 2.5 Gbit/s wavelengths to be replaced with 10 Gbit/s wavelengths.

Wayan wrote about the Glo-1 cable with a heavy dose of pessimism. Glo-1 is powered by Globacom Limited, a privately-owned commercial entity. I wonder what “restrictive regulation” would stop Glo from pricing its broadband services competitively. Already, Glo Mobile recently announced new mobile broadband packages offering much more data for the same old price, leaving its competitors to play catch-up.

Wayan forgot to mention that MTN Nigeria (a private entity) recently won a bid for the rights to SAT-3 and by inference, the submarine cable would witness a much better management in Nigeria.

Wayan conveniently excluded Main One, another privately-owned submarine cable that is set to be launched soon with an initial capacity of 1.28 Tbits/s serving Nigeria and some other West African countries.

Yet another cable is ACE. ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) submarine communications cable  is a planned cable system along the west coast of Africa between France and South Africa. Etisalat Nigeria (a Nigerian telecom operator) is part of the ACE consortium. ACE would become operational in 2011 with a minimum capacity of 1.92 Tbit/s.

Some vital stats

• Nigeria: 11,000,000 Internet users as of Jun/09, 7.4% of the population, per ITU.
  Population: 154.7 million (UN estimate).
• Kenya: 3,359,600 Internet users as of Jun/09, 8.6% of the population, per ITU.
  Population: 39.8 million (UN estimate)

3. Kenya Power & Lighting

If there is any single factor that would be the albatross of e-commerce development in Nigeria, it would be the lack of power. However, I am forced to reflect in this direction: if Nigeria could achieve this much as epileptic as power supply is, what wouldn’t it achieve when there is adequate supply?

I am far from being complacent and desperately hate the poor power supply in Nigeria but the modest achievements in the present hostile business environment deserve some commendation.

While it is true that Kenya is the regional IT hub in East Africa, Nigeria is the IT hub of a much bigger regional block (West Africa). In summary, Kenya does not beat Nigeria in the Internet business arena. It is a good thing that Africa gets more Internet connectivity but if there is any country to pitch against Nigeria in Africa, it is certainly not Kenya.