Nigeria's Online Blog

Ugandans can expect to pay lower fees to acquire website identities when the continent's first domain name comes online next year, Ms Sophia Bekele, the President of DotConnect Africa has said.

Dot Connect Africa, a private-public organisation based in Mauritius, is pushing for the dot Africa domain name. Domain names are identification labels that define a realm of administrative control on the Internet for instance .com and .biz.

"Rates for the domain names will vary from $5 (11,300) to $10,000 (Shs22.6 million) depending on the organisation or subscriber," Ms Bekele told Business Power in an interview recently.

The price bracket she quoted represents almost half the rates charged by domain name vendors in the United States and Europe. "In terms of cost, we definitely want to have a competitive advantage over the .com and .org names," she said during her recent visit to Kampala.

The organisation's mission is to have a competitive product that people like students and small business owners can afford. "For an average person and students, it will be much cheaper to encourage innovation and ownership," she said.

Dot Connect Africa is currently in negotiation with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICCAN), the global body in charge of top level domain names, to have .Africa approved.

If the application is approved, the continental domain name should be in place by August 2011 according to Ms Bekele. This year, ICCAN approved the .ae name as the top level domain for the United Arab Emirates following an application in 2009.

Besides lowering the cost of acquisition of domain names on the continent, the dot Africa name is expected to turn out as a big public relations platform for Africa across the globe.

"It is an opportunity to brand and rebrand Africa and bring in products and services to show to the world," she said. For business, the name is set to benefit Pan-African companies like; Ecobank and United Bank for Africa, which are expected to push the brand through their global business partners.

The organisations will have an option of either putting their country top level domain names like; .Uganda or .Rwanda, or have a vision of providing their services across Africa thereby adopting the .Africa domain.

African economies will also witness growth of the information technology industry as more companies will venture into domain registrations, hosting and marketing. This is expected to result into numerous job opportunities for Africans like it has happened in other continents with their customised domain names.

The development comes at a time when more Ugandans are embracing the internet for both leisure and business, with the fall in internet prices and arrival of fibre optic cables like Seacom and the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy).

Lagos — Ahead of the formal launch of Glo 1 international submarine cable, National Operator Globacom yesterday presented to telecom industry stakeholders the unique offers on the multi-million dollar facility.

At a forum at the Eko Hotel in Lagos, Globacom said the facility, the first individually owned international submarine cable in Africa would solve bandwidth capacity problem in the region and usher in reliable telecommunications services.
"We are through Glo 1 availing our customers an excellent communication network and a cost-effective voice, data, video and e-commerce services across Africa, Europe and the rest of the world, Group Chief Operating Officer, Mohamed Jameel said.
He said the facility will boost business activities from information technology to banking, oil and gas, manufacturing and commerce by offering world-class long distance voice, video and data communication services.
With a capacity of up to 2.5 terabits per second, Jameel said Glo 1 will offer unprecedented high speed internet services at much cheaper rates. "It will be of immense advantage to Internet Service Providers, GSM and CDMA operators who will pass on the benefits to remote enterprises, retail and individual customers.
"Glo 1 also has 99.9 per cent up time reliability. Therefore, customers are assured of much faster, more reliable and cheaper internet services,he said.
He said Glo 1 will offer attractive rates and long term partnerships resulting in enhanced profitability for the customer through flexible terms of contracts tailor-made for the customer type and need.

A unique advantage we have is our extensive terrestrial network in West Africa through our operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Benin Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia and Senegal. This will enable Glo 1 to give end-to-end connectivity including last mile services, thus providing a one-stop-shop for customers requirements.
Glo1 has connectivity with top international carriers which gives it a global reach and enables it to offer international standard Service Level Agreements, giving the customer guaranteed world-class services at highly affordable price,the GCOO also said.
Glo will also be able to offer Data Center Services, the first operator to do so in Nigeria. Such centers can be connected to Glo 1 for disaster recovery across the globe.

Other services that Glo 1 will offer include telemedicine and seamless video conferencing. With the facility, medical information can be transferred through interactive audiovisual media. Remote medical procedures or examinations will therefore be possible.
Glo 1 will aid on-line diagnosis and video conferencing during surgery and research, while distance learning will be made easy by enabling a class of students and lecturers in West Africa to participate in a real time class in Europe, America and any other part of the world, Jameel explained.
Glo 1 is also expected to facilitate premium video conferencing between multiple locations across the country and the West African region, thus reducing operational cost incurred in traveling by corporate organisations. This will be of great benefit to oil and gas companies, banks and other corporate organisations.
Using Glo 1 will enable multinational companies to get connected to all their international locations through global Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Using our International Private Leased Circuits (IPLC) service, offices in Nigeria and other parts of Africa can connect to their offices abroad on a completely private circuit.
"Glo 1 will bring to reality the desire of multinational companies and financial institutions to deploy ERP solutions to connect their branches in different countries and continents. All these will indeed signal the dawn of a new era in telecommunication in Africa," Jameel said.
The 9,800km-long Glo 1 cable connects Nigeria to the United Kingdom (UK) through Mauritania, Morocco and 16 West African countries with dedicated extension to New York.

British online banking customers have fallen victim to a sophisticated attack by cyber criminals who have stolen thousands of pounds from their accounts.

About 3,000 online banking customers have been victims of a computer virus attack that empties their accounts while showing them fake statements so the scam goes undetected.

Experts have described the attack using a ‘trojan‘ virus as the most sophisticated and dangerous malware program ever created.

The cyber criminals stole an estimated £675,000 between July 5 and August 4 and the attack is still progressing, experts warn.

The latest virus is a variant of the Zeus trojan banking virus which first emerged three years ago and is called Zeus v3.

M86 Security said: ‘We’ve never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat. Always check your balance and have a good idea of what it is.’

The scam was discovered after M86 gained access to the command-and-control server in Eastern Europe running the thefts.

It collects data such as passwords and even transfers money out of accounts automatically, but only after checking if there is at least £800 available.

Bradley Anstis, M86 vice-president of technology strategy, said: ‘This is an extremely sophisticated version of the virus and it cannot be detected by traditional security software.‘

The company said it was the most-sophisticated and dangerous virus yet seen and advised online banking users to check their balances regularly and have a good idea of what it should be.

British high street banks do not believe they have become victims of the cyber criminals.

A spokesman for HSBC said: ‘There are millions of viruses and other malicious software.

‘We urge people to take basic measure to protect themselves from virus attacks.

‘Any customer who is a victim of fraud will be reimbursed by HSBC.

However, M86 said it believed one high street bank was breached and failed to act quickly after warnings last month.

More than 100,000 PCs in Britain have been infected with other forms of the trojan virus.

McAfee Inc, the security software maker, said production of software code known as malware, which can harm computers and steal user passwords, reached a new high in the first six months of 2010.

McAfee said total malware production continued to soar and 10 million new pieces of malicious code were catalogued.

It also warned users of Apple‘s Mac computers, considered relatively safe from virus attacks, that they may also be subjected to malware attacks in the future.

‘For a variety of reasons, malware has rarely been a problem for Mac users. But those days might end soon,‘ a spokesman said.

There is hardly a day the average city person does not have to use one type of password or the other. If you‘re not signing into your email account, you may be visiting one secured website or the other or may be requiring your personal identification number to use your credit or debit card. Obviously, there are just too many usernames and passwords to remember these days that you will likely forget some. That is what technological advancement has brought; it solves problems and at times, creates new worries.

For many people, there is an easy way to get around the problem: Using the same username and password or similar ones over and over. In fact, a week-long experiment conducted recently by international IT security solutions company, BitDefender, reveals that some people use the same user name and password in logging into several secure websites.

The experiment, according to the Telegraph of London, also revealed that some 250,000 email addresses, usernames and passwords were found in social and open networks, including blogs, collaboration platforms, torrents, and other channels.

Some 87 per cent of the information discovered are still valid and can be used to access accounts using information found elsewhere on the Internet. Moreover, the study revealed that 75 per cent of users use the same username and password to access both their email accounts and their social networking accounts.

If you are among such people, however, you just have to stop the practice as experts say that it is the easiest way to expose yourself to identity fraud. According to Mr. Robert McMillan in the article, Security secrets the bad guys don‘t want you to know, published on www.pcworld.com, hackers know that you‘re likely to use the same user name and password in many cases and, as such, they’re happy to use it against you.

”Often they steal a person‘s password and user name, perhaps, via a phishing attack, and then try that combination on other popular services – Facebook, Gmail, PayPal, Yahoo – to see if it works there, too,” he notes.

The best basic solution to this problem, experts say, is to have different usernames and passwords to protect identities and information not meant to be public.

Also, the President, Social Media Club Nigeria, Mr. Yinka Olaito, suggests that people should combine several codes as password and change it often.

Microsoft, however, advises that you should avoid using real words or logical combinations of letters, as that keeps you safer from a ‘dictionary attack‘, which uses a database of words and common character sequences to try to guess the code.

But a report published last week by researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, United States, advises that the best solution is to have a 12-digit character password.

The researchers used clusters of graphics cards to crack eight-character passwords in less than two hours.

But when the researchers applied that same processing power to 12-character passwords, they found it would take 17,134 years to make them snap.

”The length of your password in some cases can dictate the vulnerability,” notes Mr. Joshua Davis, a research scientist at the Institute.

It‘s hard to say what will happen in the future, but for now, 12-character passwords should be the standard, says Mr. Richard Boyd, a senior research scientist who also worked on the project.

The researchers, according to the Cable Network News article titled, How to create a ‘super password,‘ recommend 12-character passwords – as opposed to those with 11 or, say, 13 characters – because that number strikes a balance between ”convenience and security.”

They assumed a sophisticated hacker might be able to try 1 trillion password combinations per second. In that scenario, it takes 180 years to crack an 11-character password, but there‘s a big jump when you add just one more character –17,134 years.

Passwords have got longer over time, and security experts, according to CNN, are already recommending that people use full sentences as passwords.

Carnegie Mellon University, US, according to CNN, suggests password-sentence: ”No, the capital of Wisconsin isn‘t Cheeseopolis!” Or maybe something that‘s easier to remember, like this: ”I have two kids: Jack and Jill.”

But even though advances in cheap computing power are making long, complicated passwords a necessity, not all websites will accommodate them, Boyd tells CNN.

However, CNN believes it is best to use the longest and most complex password a site will allow. For example, if a website will let you create a password with non-letter characters – like ”@y;}v%W$\5\” – then you should do so.

If, however, you keep having problems with memorising or remembering all your passwords, McMillan says there are free and simple password management tools, such as KeePass Password Safe that are available to keep track of your passwords for you.

Bharti Airtel, a leading telecom services provider that recently acquired zain's Africa operations, has announced that it would invest USD 10 million in Seychelles.

This is coming after the Board of Directors approved the acquisition of 100 % of the leading telecom operator in the country, Telecom Seychelles Limited, for an enterprise value of USD 62 million. During a meeting with the Vice President of Seychelles, Danny Faure, Bharti Airtel Africa Chief Executive Officer Mr. Manoj Kohli, said that the investment will be phased over the next three years.

Bharti Airtel will also participate in the Seychelles East Africa submarine cable (SEAS) project. This is a 2,000 km, USD $34 million submarine cable between Seychelles and Dar es Salaam, which will connect Seychelles to the world and the global economy.

Mr. Manoj Kohli said, "We will leverage our expertise and infrastructure to offer customized data solutions for our large enterprise and corporate clients, which will help them gain a unique competitive advantage." The acquisition of Telecom Seychelles has grown Bharti Airtel's African footprint to 16 countries and its overall presence to 19 countries.

In a surprising new wave, the popular refurbished phones commonly known as China phones notable for it's 'No Name' feature and sometimes small Chinese inscriptions on weak metallic casings bearing a thousand and one key buttons - its perfect giveaway, has now metamorphosed.

After years of steady progression in cloning, these sometimes very disappointing phones now bear the branded names of the popular phone brands you once knew and if not careful could be purchased as the brand new one.

According to investigations carried out by vanguard CyberLIFE at the computer village Otigba market over the weekend, it was discovered that these substandard phones in their new faces and names are complete identicals to the original brands. Some even have similarly cloned accessories to match and now major ICT markets in the country are full of them.

External features of these phones bare the original models' logo and also come in same colours. A much closer examination by this reporter revealed that the weight of these phones which had been another dead giveaway in the past had also been adjusted and balanced up to level with that of the original model. It's internal features had also been reworked to contain all the setups of the original phone.

One major feature that hasn't changed however with the refurbished phone is the prize. These makeover phones are still sold at a staggeringly lower cost compared to what the original models are being sold for. This has been the singular feature that has endeared the refurbished phone trade to the market. Already, experts in consumer behavior have noted that customers will still go for products of significantly lower cost even when they know it is of substandard value. Ultimately, making the job of pushing China phones out of the market very difficult.

Some phone sellers who had called to this reporter claimed that the new improved phones had been refurbished to be in much more better working order than the brand new version. Vanguard CyberLIFE's investigations however observed that there were slight cosmetic flaws in the graphic settings of these phones. The number letterings in the phones had looked slightly awkward.

A refurbished mobile phone is one that has been returned to the factory from a cell phone company and rebuilt, usually to new specifications. Sometimes, a favorite model will no longer be manufactured new, but a customer can get a refurbished one.

A refurbished mobile phone should, in all respects, work exactly as a new phone. This is probably more likely to be the case when the refurbished mobile phone does not have many complex features, such as a camera. A study has shown that cell phone customers routinely upgrade their mobile phones every couple of years or so, and the old ones have to go somewhere. Some are discarded, if they are no longer compatible with the cellular system, but many are sent back to the factory to be refurbished. This is also the case for phones that malfunction.

Whether if buying a refurbished mobile phone is a good idea depends greatly on the manufacturer. Reputable makers usually produce a good product, but this may not be the case with "off" brands. i.e a phone that has been returned for refurbishing as a result of a malfunction. Unfortunately, this is usually the case with most refurbished phones on sale in the country's ICT market. The malfunction problem that had caused the phone to be refurbished in the first place always reoccur and thus the cliche that china phones are never durable.

Even though the buying of refurbished phones is common world over, experts have said that since it is never clear what the exact origin or condition of a refurbished phone is, it is impossible for the consumer to know the reason why the phone has been refurbished in the first place. At this point, they advise that consumers disregard any "supposed" knowledge the salesman tries to impart on this aspect of the product, because he/she has no inside knowledge on this issue either and pray to God they just pick a good one.

A new BlackBerry, but more importantly, a new BlackBerry operating system upgrade, is coming. "Yawn," you say? Don't be too quick to dismiss Research In Motion and its sturdy line of smart phones.

On Tuesday, the company, in conjunction with AT&T, is expected to announce a new touch-slider phone, the BlackBerry Bold 9800, which will likely use a new OS, version 6. Indications are that 6 will be an exponential improvement from OS 5, including a badly needed re-do of the BlackBerry Web browser, which is painfully slow and frustrating to use.

The Web browser is a metaphor for BlackBerrys themselves — often kludgy, sluggish and difficult to use, especially when compared to the iPhone and phones using the Android operating system. But tabbed browsing — which lets you keep one Web page in view while looking at another — is finally coming to the BlackBerry browser, and so is speed, with the new browser described as being much quicker.

Perhaps RIM is just catching up to where the iPhone and Android are, but it would be foolish to count RIM out — especially as it still retains the No. 1 spot in the United States as a smart phone platform, with 41.7 percent of the market at the end of May, according to comScore.

That leading edge has been getting nibbled away, slowly but surely, first by the iPhone, introduced in 2007, and now by Android, which has come on like gangbusters in the past year, helped by several high-profile phones including the Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Incredible and HTC Evo.

RIM's market share was down four-tenths of a percent from what it had been three months earlier, comScore said; at the end of December 2009, RIM had a 41.6 percent market share, and at the end of September, 2009, a 42.6 percent share.

"Mobile operating systems have become the key ingredient in the highly competitive mobile device market," said Stephen Drake, IDC's vice president of mobility and telecom, earlier this year.
"Although the overall look and feel of the device will still play an important role in the buying process, the wrong choice of operating system coupled with an awkward user interface can mean the difference between success and failure."

BlackBerry OS 6 will have to prove itself in these criteria, as will Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7, which shows lots of promise , but is by no means a sure thing. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

"We believe (BlackBerry's) new user interface with multi-touch technology and ... browser closes the gap materially against Android and iPhone," Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. said in a note to clients this week.

While RIM is keeping a zipped lip until Tuesday's announcement, there have been some previews of what is coming.

At RIM's own " Inside BlackBerry: The Official BlackBerry Blog," Joey Benedek, the company's director of user experience research, talks about not only a "cleaner and sleeker" look to the BlackBerry's home screen, but also how "movement between and within applications is more fluid," letting users navigate the device more intuitively with a sliding gesture.

Such fluidity would be good, as now it can be like pecking for scraps trying to maneuver a BlackBerry's keys and menus.

The new OS 6 also will have five separate views that a user "can easily switch between using the Navigation Bar, depending on their preference and the type of information they’re looking for," Benedek said in the Inside BlackBerry interview.

"These include: 'Frequent,' where your most frequently used apps are automatically placed for easy access; 'Favorites,' where you can choose to add not just your favorite applications, but also to create shortcuts to particular contacts or Web pages ... 'media' for all your media-centric content; 'downloads,' for all the apps you download; and 'all' ... (a) big vertical list that you can scroll through, similar to the Home Screen today."

Benedek said that users will be able to "simply slide left and right (the touch-screen or trackpad, depending on your BlackBerry smart phone model) to quickly get to any of these new view panes."

There will also be two "quick access areas" of the home screen. One will be for connections, alarm and the options screen; the other for viewing your most recent e-mails, BB Messenger text messages, phone calls, as well as Facebook and Twitter posts.

The BlackBerry home screen will also include "Universal Search" — something the iPhone and Android offer — to make it easy to find contacts, music, photos — any of your stuff stashed on your smart phone.

The improvements are long overdue, and will be welcomed by BlackBerry fans who have stayed loyal to the company and its phones. Some have migrated to Android, as well as to the iPhone in the past year or so.

Whether RIM's operating system changes are enough to keep existing customers and draw new ones in remains to be seen. The smart phone market itself continues to keep growing, with more American consumers buying the devices. And BlackBerrys remain the corporate cell phone of choice because of their reputation for generally good security and overall sturdiness.

The laptop range of Zinox Computers, Nigeria’s first internationally certified branded computers, has emerged the best selling notebooks in the Nigerian market, according to the latest report by International Data Corporation (IDC), the US-based global leader in market research and analysis in information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology.

The report shows that Zinox Computers continues to perform very strongly, ensuring a quality Nigerian participation in a market that would have been completely dominated by foreign brands.

The Q2 2010 IDC report posted on the company’s web site reveals that Zinox laptops are the fastest growing and best selling Notebooks in the Nigerian market.
Zinox is strongest in the laptop market where it leads six other international brands, including HP, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo and LG Electronics, with a 53.6% market share and a year-on-year growth of 799 per cent, while its closest competitor, HP, achieved a 23.6 per cent market share.

In the desktop computer category, Zinox came second with an 11.4 per cent share as the market defines a HP/Zinox rivalry.
The IDC report showed that Zinox has a share of 32.5 per cent of the Total PC market, a remarkable achievement for an indigenous brand that has been in the market for less than a decade.

Commenting on the report, the chairman of Zinox Computers, Mr. Leo Stan Ekeh, said that the report has justified the vision, hard work, capital outlay, human resources and patriotism that have gone into the building of the Zinox brand.

He said that he was satisfied that Nigerians are proving that if given the opportunity they could compete and overcome even the best in the world while admitting that though they had initially challenges like any other company but they have stabilised in the last three years.
He recalled that amidst scepticism in government circles, among professionals, and the general public, he had declared at the launch in 2001 that Zinox was a public trust and a spiritual commitment.

He had proclaimed that Zinox had the finances, the know-how, and the will to make the brand a source of national pride. Ekeh said that he was proud that less than a decade after that launch, the Zinox brand was keenly competing for space with foreign and international brands.

He said that the success of the Zinox brand is traceable to the strict adherence to international quality standards and processes.
“For example,” he said, “the launch of Zinox was delayed for some years to enable Zinox Computers to attain the Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL), a certification that remained exclusive to Zinox among the indigenous manufacturers for many years.

“In 2005, just four years after launch, Zinox received the NIS ISO 9001:2000 quality and management processes certification. In recognition of its quest for excellence, the brand has won all known international and local Awards from professional associations, and remains the largest partners of Intel and Microsoft Inc. in sub Saharan Africa. And just in June 2010, Intel, the number 1 Microchips producers in the world, profiled Zinox Computers in its newsletter as African Digital success story based on her achievements and growth.”

Ekeh explained that the flagship of the Zinox charge in the market is the Bijimi (Digital work horse in Hausa) laptop which comes in two variants: the Bijimi PRO and the Bijimi Sage, The Zinox Pride Notebook, “an all-time best seller loaded with over 1,000,000 e-books and other contents like JAMB,WAEC, NECO etc exams revision questions and answers. This dominance of the laptop market is also helped in no small way by the rapid market penetration gained by the Zinox Smart mini notebooks in partnership with Intel.” The performance is based on a strategy of continually identifying and reaching professionals, the underserved or un-reached.

This is evident in the fact that Zinox Computers today is responsible for over 75 per cent of the computerization going on in the educational sector. The Zinox strategy has also been greatly helped by the number of branches in Nigeria (14 at the last count) which is the largest run by any computer company in Nigeria, enabling an after sales support that is accessible from anywhere in Nigeria with additional support agreement with TD Plus Ltd, a wholly after sales support company.

“These branches are staffed by internationally certified Nigerian professionals and that’s why we were able to intervene to save major national and international events in Nigeria like the All Africa Games (COJA 2003), Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2003) and the INEC voters’ registration of 2006. Armed with this high quality product portfolio, human resources and an impeccable patriotic will, becoming No. 1 was only a matter of time – because the Zinox brand was configured to be Number One,” added Mr. Leo Stan Ekeh.

He said these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the support and prayer of governments and people of Nigeria, “in particular [former] President Olusegun Obasanjo and corporates who have shown faith in the Nigerian dream by standardizing on Zinox”.
Zinox Computers was launched in October 2001 as Nigeria’s IT Identity. From inception, Zinox has scored a number of firsts: first computer company in Nigeria to acquire the WHQL, first Nigerian computer company to introduce the Naira sign on its international keyboard, first Nigerian computer manufacturer to attain the ISO certification, first to receive presidential endorsement as computer of choice for Nigeria, among others.

Faithful to its Nigerian roots, Zinox has given back generously to support the growth of a knowledge economy. These include initiating the Computerize Nigeria Project to create awareness and access to the computer as a major tool for work and play; the establishment of digital centres at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Lagos State Polytechnic, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, among others.

Zinox has been a major sponsor of seminars, lectures and symposiums, aimed at capacity building, for the civil society. Zinox has also distinguished itself in large sponsorships – sponsoring the 8th All Africa Games in 2003, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, in 2003, the official computer of the African Union Heads of States meeting in 2005 at the Gambia. Zinox is a regular major sponsor of all ICT professional bodies in Nigeria.

Lagos — History was made yesterday as MainOne Company Limited launched the commercial operation of its fibre optic cable technology which is expected to revolutionise Information Communication Technology (ICT).

The technology which took off in Lagos yesterday, cost about $240 million (N36 billion) and will provide international video conferencing with clear audio and visual quality irrespective of location.

Chairman of the of the company, Mr. Fola Adeola, said the submarine cables were laid from Portugal to Lagos covering a distance of about 7,200 kilometres. Adeola, who is the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, added that the firm currently has a solid base in London, South Africa, Bangalore and Tenerife.

The MainOne chairman acknowledged that a major difficulty was encountered in executing the project expected to catalyse a major change in Africa's information and communication, especially while laying the sub-sea cables,

According to him, in some countries, the firm was required to sign papers and pay for right of way, while others required the company to sign an undertaking not to damage subsea cables already in place in the course of laying its own.

Also speaking at the launch, MainOne Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Ms. Funke Okpeke, said the technology "will be transmitting at a speed of 4.92 terabytes about five terabytes. What has been made available is faster than the 40 gigabytes that is available in Europe." Okpeke explained that the cable made landing in Ghana, Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

The managing director added: "The cable will deliver unprecedented broadband capacity to West Africa more than ten times what is currently available. With its cable systems now turned on, MainOne is poised to champion a communications revolution in Africa by impacting businesses, governments and individuals by providing higher bandwidths and exceptional speed at a lower cost.

"It will impact all sectors from education to health, entertainment etc. It will help to drive economic growth and create job opportunities in the whole of Africa," Okpeke explained.

In his address, Acting Vice Chairman Nigeria Communications Commissions (NCC), Dr. Bahire Gwandu, warned them not to be complacent, adding that bigger ones with higher capacity will soon be around the corner.

Gwandu said that because the NCC's desperation for a fibre optic cable to rollout in the country forced it to slash the firm's license to N25 million and called on the firm to reciprocate the gesture by making sure that Nigerians have access to the service at the cheapest available rate.

Gwandu called on Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) to reduce cost per kilometre on right of way for telecommunications companies so that the services would come to Nigerians at a cheaper rate. The NCC helmsman explained that telecommunications companies "are crying wolf that the state government charges $60 per kilometre of right of way."

Speaking on the occasion, Fashola, who commended the company, called on telecoms firms to always inform the state ahead of time instead of destroying existing infrastructures just to lay cables.

Also, his Cross River State counterpart, Governor Liyel Imoke, said the technology "is ground-breaking. It will revolutionise business and technology in Nigeria and Africa. The technology was later demonstrated with teleconferencing between Lagos and London, Bangalore in India, South Africa and Tenerife."

Lagos — Since the idea of registering SIM cards by GSM owners was first mooted last year, it would appear that not all the telecommunication companies are excited about it. Their reasons may not seem obvious but not few Nigerians are astonished about the foot-dragging given the obvious benefits to be derived from the exercise.

The principal reason for SIM registration is to minimize the incidence of crimes easily perpetrated by some users of GSM phones. There is no denying that the emergence of mobile phones has aided the proliferation of crimes especially among cyber-savvy youths who use the device for kidnapping and for easy co-ordination of their movements.

While we are not suggesting that all crimes have been committed with the aid of mobile phones, the truth is that access to cheap GSM phones has been a fillip to crime merchants. This is more so in an environment in which any one can buy SIMs without being required to register them.

Until the idea of SIM registration came up, people bought their SIMs anywhere. The vendors cared nothing about the name and address of the buyer. All that mattered was the money the buyer paid. All you needed to do if you wanted to acquire a SIM was to simply walk across the street and buy one from any of the street vendors. The implication was that such SIMs could be used for any kind of call without their owners being traced. There have been, for instance, cases of GSM phones being used to make threat calls.

By insisting that SIMs are now to be registered, the Federal Ministry of Information and Communication wants the incidence of crime committed with GSM phones to be brought under control. This, we think, is a great idea. It deserves the support of all Nigerians, including those who make the SIMs. True, the exercise itself may not be fool-proof. Some buyers, especially those with ill-motives, may not supply accurate or reliable information about themselves. Nonetheless, that does not altogether negate the gains to be made from the exercise.

Any one opposed to the idea must then have ulterior motives. The only reason opponents of the proposal may advance for their action is that it takes away anonymity. While that may be true, it is no serious disability.

Also, while cost and logistics problems may the reason for the foot-dragging of the telecoms companies, it is nothing compared to the benefits derivable from registration of SIMs.

Not only will the scheme help in checking the incidence of mobile phone-assisted crimes, it will equally assist in identifying the sources of ill-motivated phone calls. It cannot be denied that many users of the GSM phone have thoroughly abused it. They have turned it into a weapon of terror. This abuse will be a lot easier to check if SIMs were registered.

All the GSM companies and their retailers should therefore co-operate with the scheme by sensitising their customers to the need to register their old SIMs. New buyers must be made to register before sales can be completed. We are happy to note that one or two telecom companies are already doing so. The rest should follow suit. The fight against crime must be taken from all angles if it is to be won. Indeed the case for SIM registration has never been more compelling than now when crime rate is on the rise.

Those who perpetrate crimes using GSM phone must be made to realise that they cannot continue to oppress the society with such ease. The phone was made to ease life. Those who have turned it to some negative purpose must be stopped for the safety of law-abiding members of the society. We are for this reason totally in support of SIM registration. All dealers must be required to do so. Non-co-operation by telecom operators is not acceptable and should be viewed seriously by the government.