ICTworks by Inveneo

Each month, the web browser company Opera, releases a report on the usage of its mobile web browser. From the State of the Mobile Web, October 2010, Moses Kemibaro made some interesting insights.

Below is an excerpt from that I felt were worth sharing:

Recently, Moses Kemibaro present the marketing plan for the .KE top-level country domain, managed by the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC). In his presentation, he asks an intriguing question: Are .KE domain names really expensive?

Now I wasn't at the presentation to hear his thoughts, but from the slide show, I will assume that he feels that .KE domain names are not that expensive. I respectfully disagree.

.KE domain names are way overpriced

The real question that Moses should be asking is, "Are .KE domain names relatively expensive?" See, its not that .KE registrars are making 75% profit, like .com registrars, its that new web entrants, which they're targeting with the me.ke marketing plan, are going to be price sensitive.

At $5 or less per year for the more widely known .com domain name, the $45 per year fee for a .KE domain is crazy expensive. Add to it that young Kenyans (the assumed me.ke target market) have less to spend on domain names, and I say that KENIC should be trying to price personal .KE domain names at $2 or $3 per year.

Give me.ke domain names away!

In fact, I say that KENIC should be giving away the first year of a me.ke domain name. Why? Because the owners of a me.ke domain will invest in it, to make it real and respectable - its thiername.ke after all - and when year 2 comes along, they'll pay $5-10 to keep their new address alive.

A great example of this marketing plan as a successful business strategy is 1&1.com, the giant German web host. They give away the first year of a domain name and add on many important features for free, because they know that once a person (or business) invests in a domain name, they'll want to keep it.

And I should know. I've owned wayan.com, wayan.org, wayan.net, and wayan.us for a decade now.

Recently the East African undersea cables SEACOM and TEAMS experienced a major Internet outage when the cable they connect to, the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, was damaged on the Mediterranean sea bed.

As Moses Kemibaro explains, the outage was a shock to those now used to speedy Internet access and he calls for cloud computing redundancy:

The outage required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Telcos to re-route their bandwidth via expensive satellite connections so as to maintain some semblance of connectivity – this tended from very bad to quite slow depending on your choice of service provider. It is for this very reason why we urgently need to have local clouds that function even when international bandwidth and cloud are not available. This way, essential cloud-based services will continue to function locally.

I'd like to take his idea one step father - we need offline cloud computing redundancy, not just local-to-Kenya redundancy. While I can appreciate that Nairobi Internet users would want to still reach servers in Westlands if SEACOm or TEAMS were down, those in Kisumu or Eldoret want their cloud services if the link to Nairobi goes down. And as well Kakamega or Siaya if their links to larger cities go down.

So this means re-thinking cloud computing from a central server farm in the USA or even in Nairobi, to many smaller server gardens in many local locations. Redundancy that can ensure connectivity to your apps, no matter which link goes down. A redundancy kinda like the Internet itself.

That's why I say that with cloud computing, all weather is local.

Like this? Then friend us on Facebook

"The East African blogosphere has thousands of active bloggers who cover almost every conceivable topic within a local content context. "

This is the declaration by Moses Kemibaro in his East African Standard article, We have the demand for local content, why not upload it? I think I have to disagree.

There may be thousands of bloggers, but most are writing about personal events only interesting to them, or sports events that excite football followers. I don't see our hear that many East Africans writing about the intersection of ICT and business.

Where are the voices on technology? The commentary on its business impact? Who is an expert in ICT4D? These are the bloggers I am looking for and I've only found a few in East Africa.

1. Appfrica
2. White African
3. Wanjiku's Take
4. Kenya Entrepreneur
5. Moses Kemibaro

Now according to Moses, there must be more bloggers than this in East Africa - I sure hope so as well. Who are they?

Last week, there was a countrywide blackout in Kenya. The electrical authority, KPLC, took the national electrical grid offline from around 6pm to around 11pm, local time due to a generator failure.

As you can imagine, this was a shock to the country and its national pride. Kenya thought itself immune to blackouts due to its hydropower system, which is now under duress after a multi-year drought. But amidst the chaos, there is an ICT lesson to learn. Just listen to what Moses Kemibaro did when the lights went out:

The first thing I did was whip out my smart phone and decided to get on Twitter and Facebook via Safaricom’s 3G connection that was working in spite of the blackout. In a matter of seconds, I had replies that it was not just in Westlands and Kileleshwa that had a blackout but that it was indeed countrywide!

This is kind of “peculiar” since even though I did not have access to television or radio the whole time, here I was able to get the latest news via the Internet on Twitter and Facebook on the extensive Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) blackout.

Alternate Kenyan power generation

So here we have a case study in how information and communication technology can delivery timely and needed news during a national crisis. Safaricom's voice and data systems were able to spread knowledge of the event via the Internet when traditional media were unable to, thanks to their backup distributed power systems.

And the surprise there? Many mobile phone operators generate their own power from wind and solar, as much as diesel generator. Inveneo ICIP WinAfrique and other power partners are equipping cell towers with alternate power solutions that work even with the national grid (or the sun) is down.

The national blackout might have another surprise as well - a Kenyan baby boom nine months from now. But only with non-geeks. Those wired, like Moses, didn't take advantage of a great opportunity to say:

"Hey baby, how you doing?"

.