One of India’s largest telecommunications operators, the Essar Telecom Business Group has enhanced its presence on the African continent – the fastest growing mobile telecommunications market, by agreeing to buy a stake in Warid Telecom’s Africa operations.
This means that Essar is ahead of rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications. The two cellular giants from India have all made unsuccessful attempts so far to enter the African mobile market.
They both have tried tie-ups with African giant Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) of South Africa, but something has on all occasions prevented the merger.
The Essar Group, which is the holding company for Essar Telecom has signed definitive agreements with the Dhabi Group, the owners of Warid Telecom for an investment by Essar into the telecom assets of Warid Telecom in Uganda and the Republic of Congo.
Warid Telecom Uganda is a new comer to the telecoms market here but is gaining fast in terms of subscriber numbers on its rivals MTN, Zain and Uganda Telecom.
A press statement said the agreements were signed by His Highness Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Al Nahayan on behalf of the Dhabi Group and Prashant Ruia, the Group Chief Executive Essar Group in Abu Dhabi on November 15.
The enterprise valuation of the Uganda and Congo operations is collectively valued at
US$318 million. According to the statement, the Essar Group has committed growth capital to both telecom operations to facilitate network expansion and marketing.
Upon completion, the Essar Group will acquire a majority stake (51 percent) in both operations. “The partnership is also expected to bring operational efficiencies to the African operations,” the statement reads in part.
“We are pleased to join hands with a Group that both complements and extends our synergies to expand further into Africa,” Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the chairman of Dhabi Group said.
“Warid has expanded its greenfield operations to become credible competitors and challengers in the market where it operates; the time is now right for the next stage of its growth and evolution.”
Ruia expressed delight to partner with the Dubai group saying the tie-up is in line with Essar’s plan to be a part of the growing telecom market in Africa.
“This transaction with the Dhabi Group augments our successful launch of telecom services in Kenya under the brand ‘yu’ which was a stepping stone for Essar to expand its telecom footprint to the African continent,” Ruia said.
He said Essar’s investment in Warid Telecom in Africa is a part of its strategic plans to grow its business in Africa and the Middle East as it explores business opportunities by foreign partnerships with prominent business groups.
After the successful launch of mobile services in Kenya under the brand ‘yu’, Essar Telecom is now expanding its footprint in East Africa with Uganda and Republic of Congo operations.
Regarded as one of the fastest growing telecom operators in Kenya, Essar Telecom Kenya has over 600,000 subscribers and expects this number to grow significantly as it completes its rollout across Kenya.
The Dhabi Group transaction is subject to regulatory approvals in Uganda and Republic of Congo.
In its home market, Essar holds a 33 percent interest in Vodafone Essar, a joint venture with the Vodafone Group, and is one of India’s largest cellular service providers, with over 85 million subscribers.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Nokia’s Ovi Mail comes to East Africa
Mobile phone handset maker Nokia has launched its Ovi mail offering in East Africa – the service is available to users in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
The launch in East Africa is part of a global launch in all markets “but especially the emerging markets.”
Ovi Mail is an email identity that Nokia has primarily developed for first-time email users.
The offering will especially be popular with users in developing markets where people do not have an email account or have difficulty accessing a PC, which is usually required to create an email account.
“Ovi Mail gives such users the opportunity to create an email account directly on their devices and start communicating with their family and friends,” Dorothy Ooko, the communications manager for Nokia in Eastern and Southern Africa said via email.
In more developed markets where users have email accounts and find it easier to access PCs, Ooko said Ovi Mail gives them the opportunity to create a new email account that will also give them contextuality, as well as cross access to other Ovi services.
Ovi Mail enables Nokia mobile device users to create and use email accounts (username@ovi.com) directly on their mobile phone.
Last week, Nokia launched the offering in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and already the response from users has been good.
“We have received mail from consumers telling us how this has transformed how they do business,” Ooko said.
“The most memorable was a woman in Kajiado, Kenya who said she no longer has to travel to a cyber cafe for mail as she can communicate directly with many of her clients.”
Ovi Mail was developed for first-time email users and advanced Email users – the primary targets being users in developing/emerging markets who do not have a pre-existing email account, or who have little or no access to a PC.
The secondary target base according to Ooko includes users who have other email accounts but would like to create another secondary email account that is designed for mobile use.
Ooko said the service so far has local language support for 11 languages with future plans to support over 80 languages.
Ovi Mail can be set up and accessed directly on users’ service-optimized Nokia Series 40 devices.
The service provides the mobile client interface and mobile service that enables users to access their pre-existing email accounts from over 1000 ISPs (including Gmail and Yahoo mail) around the world on their mobile device.
Ooko said the key drivers for a new email account for those who already have web Email include the ease of setup, ease of access, and also the number of access points.
“We are giving users the opportunity to easily create a new email account for themselves, directly on their devices without needing to use a PC first, so that they too can stay connected,” Ooko said.
“While they may use their web-based Ovi Mail accounts to send and receive files (playlists, images, videos, etc.), we don’t expect them to exceed 1GB of web storage space each.”
The Ovi service is available on the new Series 40 devices that Nokia launched this year.
Ooko however was quick to add that there are currently 36 Series 40 device models that are optimized for Ovi Mail.
Ooko said the market need and opportunity for mobile provisioning of new Web-based email accounts lies in developing markets where the Nokia Series 40 devices are extremely popular. It is expected that the same capability will be introduced for Nokia Series 60 devices over time.
Ovi Mail is Web mail, and like all Internet services, mobile access requires a data tariff.
What Nokia has done is it has removed the barrier for users to set-up and start using Ovi Mail on their devices for free.
“However, users will be charged by the local operators based on the amount of data used to send and receive emails,” Ooko said.
To access Ovi Mail, a user simply needs to go to the email setup wizard on their Nokia Series 40 device or Nokia S60 device such as the Nokia N97. Ovi Mail is also available on the web at https://mail.ovi.com/.
Over one million Ovi mail accounts have been activated over the past six months elsewhere the service was introduced.
The top five countries for Ovi Mail subscribers are India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. Since its inception in December 2008, Ovi Mail is available in more than 180 countries and supports 20 languages.
The launch in East Africa is part of a global launch in all markets “but especially the emerging markets.”
Ovi Mail is an email identity that Nokia has primarily developed for first-time email users.
The offering will especially be popular with users in developing markets where people do not have an email account or have difficulty accessing a PC, which is usually required to create an email account.
“Ovi Mail gives such users the opportunity to create an email account directly on their devices and start communicating with their family and friends,” Dorothy Ooko, the communications manager for Nokia in Eastern and Southern Africa said via email.
In more developed markets where users have email accounts and find it easier to access PCs, Ooko said Ovi Mail gives them the opportunity to create a new email account that will also give them contextuality, as well as cross access to other Ovi services.
Ovi Mail enables Nokia mobile device users to create and use email accounts (username@ovi.com) directly on their mobile phone.
Last week, Nokia launched the offering in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and already the response from users has been good.
“We have received mail from consumers telling us how this has transformed how they do business,” Ooko said.
“The most memorable was a woman in Kajiado, Kenya who said she no longer has to travel to a cyber cafe for mail as she can communicate directly with many of her clients.”
Ovi Mail was developed for first-time email users and advanced Email users – the primary targets being users in developing/emerging markets who do not have a pre-existing email account, or who have little or no access to a PC.
The secondary target base according to Ooko includes users who have other email accounts but would like to create another secondary email account that is designed for mobile use.
Ooko said the service so far has local language support for 11 languages with future plans to support over 80 languages.
Ovi Mail can be set up and accessed directly on users’ service-optimized Nokia Series 40 devices.
The service provides the mobile client interface and mobile service that enables users to access their pre-existing email accounts from over 1000 ISPs (including Gmail and Yahoo mail) around the world on their mobile device.
Ooko said the key drivers for a new email account for those who already have web Email include the ease of setup, ease of access, and also the number of access points.
“We are giving users the opportunity to easily create a new email account for themselves, directly on their devices without needing to use a PC first, so that they too can stay connected,” Ooko said.
“While they may use their web-based Ovi Mail accounts to send and receive files (playlists, images, videos, etc.), we don’t expect them to exceed 1GB of web storage space each.”
The Ovi service is available on the new Series 40 devices that Nokia launched this year.
Ooko however was quick to add that there are currently 36 Series 40 device models that are optimized for Ovi Mail.
Ooko said the market need and opportunity for mobile provisioning of new Web-based email accounts lies in developing markets where the Nokia Series 40 devices are extremely popular. It is expected that the same capability will be introduced for Nokia Series 60 devices over time.
Ovi Mail is Web mail, and like all Internet services, mobile access requires a data tariff.
What Nokia has done is it has removed the barrier for users to set-up and start using Ovi Mail on their devices for free.
“However, users will be charged by the local operators based on the amount of data used to send and receive emails,” Ooko said.
To access Ovi Mail, a user simply needs to go to the email setup wizard on their Nokia Series 40 device or Nokia S60 device such as the Nokia N97. Ovi Mail is also available on the web at https://mail.ovi.com/.
Over one million Ovi mail accounts have been activated over the past six months elsewhere the service was introduced.
The top five countries for Ovi Mail subscribers are India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. Since its inception in December 2008, Ovi Mail is available in more than 180 countries and supports 20 languages.
Uganda’s ICT ministry in hot water over $106m data backbone
Uganda’s young ministry of information and communication technology (ICT) is in hot water over the US$106 million National Data Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) and E-government infrastructure projects.
Legislators investigating the alleged mishandling of the two projects have ordered a forensic audit of the first phase.
The ministry has over the last few months been battling allegations of fraud and mismanagement of the $30 million first phase, which was contracted to Huawei Technologies of China under the terms of the agreement.
Stakeholders who keenly follow the ICT sector first raised the red flags on the problems within the ministry some two months ago when comments were made on a popular mailing list (i-network@dgroups.org).
Members pointed out the problems around the NBI/EGI projects and the controversy surrounding the composition and recruitment of the board members of the newly created National Information Technology Agency (NITA) Uganda – the management arm of the ministry.
Badru Ntege, a technology enthusiast and investor pointed out that the ministry has failed to contract an entity or set up a special purpose vehicle to manage the two projects and as a result sections of the fibre network have been damaged and equipment was stolen.
A recent tour of the two projects by the legislators on the ICT committee confirmed Ntege’s comments.
The legislators discovered that work on the $30 million first phase, which was completed, tested and handed over to the ministry in September 2007 has sections of it that are not operational as a result of the damage and stolen equipment.
A status report from the ministry itself also points out that power generators and air conditioners were stolen from three of the four towns that were connected in the first phase.
Keen watchers of the sector, which is ever taking on a more important role in people’s lives have always wondered why the NBI has never been connected to privately run fibre networks to boost user capacity within the country.
The committee also concluded that the fibre cables that were installed may not be able to support growing internet traffic in the near future as there is not enough provision for future upgrade of the fibre cable.
It was further noted that there was no Network Operating Centre for the first phase, and neither is there a data centre and disaster recovery centre for a project of that magnitude.
It is against this backdrop that the committee has recommended that the first phase be switched on and is operational as the forensic report is awaited.
The members of parliament also called for security of equipment at the transmission sites to avoid further losses.
In 2006, the Uganda government secured a $106 million concessional loan, with a 2% interest rate payable over 20 years, with a grace period of five years, from the Chinese government to undertake the NBI/EGI.
The two projects are meant to allow for an e-government policy, reduction of expenditure in public administration and provide communication to rural communities and improve service delivery in the fields of health, education and agriculture.
The NBI project entails the laying of 2500kms of fibre optic cable countrywide to provide high speed data transmission while the EGI connects government ministries, departments and local governments into an e-government network.
The second phase of implementation, which will commence after the mess that surrounds the first phase, has been sorted. The second phase will link Uganda's borders with those of neighboring countries – taking in those areas that private players consider unviable.
According to a project brief, the backbone is to be built and owned by government, but will be used by both public and private consumers. Once completed, a special purpose vehicle will be created to lease out the lines in the backbone to whoever is interested.
Legislators investigating the alleged mishandling of the two projects have ordered a forensic audit of the first phase.
The ministry has over the last few months been battling allegations of fraud and mismanagement of the $30 million first phase, which was contracted to Huawei Technologies of China under the terms of the agreement.
Stakeholders who keenly follow the ICT sector first raised the red flags on the problems within the ministry some two months ago when comments were made on a popular mailing list (i-network@dgroups.org).
Members pointed out the problems around the NBI/EGI projects and the controversy surrounding the composition and recruitment of the board members of the newly created National Information Technology Agency (NITA) Uganda – the management arm of the ministry.
Badru Ntege, a technology enthusiast and investor pointed out that the ministry has failed to contract an entity or set up a special purpose vehicle to manage the two projects and as a result sections of the fibre network have been damaged and equipment was stolen.
A recent tour of the two projects by the legislators on the ICT committee confirmed Ntege’s comments.
The legislators discovered that work on the $30 million first phase, which was completed, tested and handed over to the ministry in September 2007 has sections of it that are not operational as a result of the damage and stolen equipment.
A status report from the ministry itself also points out that power generators and air conditioners were stolen from three of the four towns that were connected in the first phase.
Keen watchers of the sector, which is ever taking on a more important role in people’s lives have always wondered why the NBI has never been connected to privately run fibre networks to boost user capacity within the country.
The committee also concluded that the fibre cables that were installed may not be able to support growing internet traffic in the near future as there is not enough provision for future upgrade of the fibre cable.
It was further noted that there was no Network Operating Centre for the first phase, and neither is there a data centre and disaster recovery centre for a project of that magnitude.
It is against this backdrop that the committee has recommended that the first phase be switched on and is operational as the forensic report is awaited.
The members of parliament also called for security of equipment at the transmission sites to avoid further losses.
In 2006, the Uganda government secured a $106 million concessional loan, with a 2% interest rate payable over 20 years, with a grace period of five years, from the Chinese government to undertake the NBI/EGI.
The two projects are meant to allow for an e-government policy, reduction of expenditure in public administration and provide communication to rural communities and improve service delivery in the fields of health, education and agriculture.
The NBI project entails the laying of 2500kms of fibre optic cable countrywide to provide high speed data transmission while the EGI connects government ministries, departments and local governments into an e-government network.
The second phase of implementation, which will commence after the mess that surrounds the first phase, has been sorted. The second phase will link Uganda's borders with those of neighboring countries – taking in those areas that private players consider unviable.
According to a project brief, the backbone is to be built and owned by government, but will be used by both public and private consumers. Once completed, a special purpose vehicle will be created to lease out the lines in the backbone to whoever is interested.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Uganda regulator to install bandwidth monitor
The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is set to acquire a gadget it will use to measure and monitor internet bandwidth within Uganda as it attempts to regulate this segment of the communications market.
Currently, there is no mechanism of establishing whether the bandwidth Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer internet users including UCC itself is the actual agreed upon capacity
“We are planning to get equipment that will help us in monitoring the bandwidth. If you agree with the service provider to give you, say, 60 kilobytes there is no mechanism of establishing that it is the actual bandwidth you are getting,” Isaac Kalembe, the media and public relations specialist at UCC said.
A lack of proper regulation of ISP’s activities has raised concern among internet users over the years. Users have always complained that UCC does not have a way of regulating especially the efficiency of ISPs in respect to the services they offer users.
Equipment that measure bandwidth can measure it both as raw capacity and available bandwidth.
From a user’s perspective, with this equipment, UCC will be in position to know how much bandwidth is available to every individual user and will be in position to monitor ISPs better.
This development is ever more urgent considering that despite the shift away from satellite connectivity by a lot of ISPs to SEACOM’s fibre optic cable, users said they have not experienced a difference in the speeds of the connections.
“We have problems with our service provider. We were promised double the bandwidth at the same cost but you find the Internet fluctuating most of the time. We are yet to realise the bandwidth speeds that were promised,” an official attached to a regional office of one of the leading computer software companies said.
She said her company had not noted any difference in speeds since the ISP they are subscribed to announced they had connected to SEACOM.
Teopista Aboa, the IT officer at Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) said the standards body had not realized any change in speeds despite being told that they had been connected to the undersea optic fibre cable.
Professor Venansius Baryamureeba, dean faculty of Computing and IT, Makerere University said there is need for regulation because the lay person cannot establish whether they are being cheated or not because they do not have the equipment to measure or ascertain whether they are getting their money’s worth.
“If there is no monitoring, your Internet Service Provider might see that you paid for more bandwidth than you actually use and try to divert some of it. There is really need for monitoring,” he said.
Kalembe said that despite a lack of equipment to monitor internet bandwidth, internet users can still use Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure that they are not exploited.
“Some people get connected without signing SLAs or sometimes when they sign them they do not read them properly,” he said adding that the major problem is that most people do not know their rights regarding communication services.
He said signing SLAs would, for instance, help in establishing whether the bandwidth agreed upon will be at the point of entry or reception.
“If this does not happen you need to contact your service provider and if there is no change you can contact UCC for action,” Kalembe said.
He however did not mention who the vendor of this equipment is, how much it will cost and when the equipment will be installed.
Ends ……/1
Currently, there is no mechanism of establishing whether the bandwidth Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer internet users including UCC itself is the actual agreed upon capacity
“We are planning to get equipment that will help us in monitoring the bandwidth. If you agree with the service provider to give you, say, 60 kilobytes there is no mechanism of establishing that it is the actual bandwidth you are getting,” Isaac Kalembe, the media and public relations specialist at UCC said.
A lack of proper regulation of ISP’s activities has raised concern among internet users over the years. Users have always complained that UCC does not have a way of regulating especially the efficiency of ISPs in respect to the services they offer users.
Equipment that measure bandwidth can measure it both as raw capacity and available bandwidth.
From a user’s perspective, with this equipment, UCC will be in position to know how much bandwidth is available to every individual user and will be in position to monitor ISPs better.
This development is ever more urgent considering that despite the shift away from satellite connectivity by a lot of ISPs to SEACOM’s fibre optic cable, users said they have not experienced a difference in the speeds of the connections.
“We have problems with our service provider. We were promised double the bandwidth at the same cost but you find the Internet fluctuating most of the time. We are yet to realise the bandwidth speeds that were promised,” an official attached to a regional office of one of the leading computer software companies said.
She said her company had not noted any difference in speeds since the ISP they are subscribed to announced they had connected to SEACOM.
Teopista Aboa, the IT officer at Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) said the standards body had not realized any change in speeds despite being told that they had been connected to the undersea optic fibre cable.
Professor Venansius Baryamureeba, dean faculty of Computing and IT, Makerere University said there is need for regulation because the lay person cannot establish whether they are being cheated or not because they do not have the equipment to measure or ascertain whether they are getting their money’s worth.
“If there is no monitoring, your Internet Service Provider might see that you paid for more bandwidth than you actually use and try to divert some of it. There is really need for monitoring,” he said.
Kalembe said that despite a lack of equipment to monitor internet bandwidth, internet users can still use Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure that they are not exploited.
“Some people get connected without signing SLAs or sometimes when they sign them they do not read them properly,” he said adding that the major problem is that most people do not know their rights regarding communication services.
He said signing SLAs would, for instance, help in establishing whether the bandwidth agreed upon will be at the point of entry or reception.
“If this does not happen you need to contact your service provider and if there is no change you can contact UCC for action,” Kalembe said.
He however did not mention who the vendor of this equipment is, how much it will cost and when the equipment will be installed.
Ends ……/1
Innovation, use of IT still low at 50 universities in East Africa
By Edris Kisambira
An e-readiness survey of higher institutions of learning in East Africa that was carried out in 2008 has indicated that region’s universities are limited on innovativeness and use of information technologies (IT).
The report, which was released last week in Kampala, the Uganda capital focused on accessibility, usage and availability of information communication technologies (ICTs) services in 50 universities around the East African region.
The East African region takes in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.
According to the study, which was commissioned and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, only 43% of the student population at the 50 campuses were taking part in global IT competitions that would otherwise give them international recognition.
Such competitions involve students or lecturers in developing innovative software like the Google Cup that takes place annually in Paris, France.
“Innovative projects give the universities more credibility in the world,” Professor Meoli Kashorada from the United States International University (USIU), Kenya said. “This can be achieved both by students and lecturers.”
The report indicates that the limited innovation is due to the student computer ratio and the availability of cheap bandwidth.
Rwandan universities had the best ratio at an average of seven computers per 100 students, 6.8 per 100 students in Uganda, 5.2 per 100 students in Kenya, 2.7 per 100 students in Tanzania and 1.5 per 100 students in Burundi.
This according to Professor Kashorada, the senior investigator of the report, is below the target which is 10 computers per 100 students.
The limited innovativeness at the universities has translated into poor records management and admission processes that are characteristic of long queues at universities when new students are being admitted and old ones are renewing their status.
An example is Makerere University, Uganda, the oldest university in East Africa that has the best IT facility in the region but still there is no computer programme that has been developed and installed to electronically register students without them having to queue for hours if not days.
“There is need for IT department heads to clearly present projects that benefit the whole university and push for reforms. The young people need to be given the opportunity to be innovative,” Professor Venansius Baryamureeba, the dean of the faculty of Computing and IT at Makerere University said.
Rwanda despite having the best student to computer ratio and the cheapest internet costs in the region due to a government subsidy also has high number of students leaving campus to go to Internet cafes to do research online. This though is blamed on the stretched university budgets and few facilities.
Burundi, which is just recovering from years of instability, has 70% of the student populations at its universities using Internet cafes.
It is hoped the switch from the expensive satellite connectivity to fibre optics could reduce the cost of bandwidth which will make the connectivity much faster and closer to the students.
The report reveals that fibre connectivity could lead to a rise in access from between 300 – 700 kilobites per second to 1 megabite per second for 1,000 students.
“I hope we shall not be embarrassed if we fail to absorb the fast Internet that is coming to our region. We need to have the capacity to utilise it,” Proffessor Francis Tusubira of Directorate for ICT Support at Makerere University said.
The report mentions Uganda as one of the countries where university websites are non-interactive and there is still low budget financing for ICT programmes.
According to Professor Timothy Waema of the University of Nairobi, there is still time for this to change. He says that university heads need to play a major role because they needed to make sure atleast 3% of their budgets go to ICT in general.
This annual report is compiled by the Kenya Education Network in conjunction with the Tanzania Research and Education Network, Rwanda Research and Education Network and Research and Education Network of Uganda (RENU) with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
A local search engine for Uganda
As the drum beats for the development and use of locally generated Internet content in Uganda and indeed Africa get louder, someone has gone ahead to develop a search engine that indexes all the available local content as well as that which will be created in the future.
Reinier Battenberg, the brain behind this search engine calls it a sort of Google or Yahoo. The search engine which can be found at http://search.mountbatten.net is exclusively Ugandan, the same way Google or Yahoo were for the US before they spread beyond the US borders.
Battenberg says the search engine; the first of its kind in Uganda and possibly the East Africa region, is limited to searching websites that are within Uganda and are connected to local Ugandan internet.
“It lets you search Uganda-based websites. People say there is no local content but we have indexed all Ugandan web pages. They are just over 100,000 pages and that is quite substantial. So the argument that there is no local content is not entirely true,” Battenberg said.
Battenberg who is also the director Mountbatten ldt., a local web hosting and developing provider says local hosting in Africa is underestimated and a lot of internet users don’t know what local content is, but that there is a lot of potential for locally hosted Uganda websites with local content.
“It could be your local lawyer, accountant, dentist – all these people need websites and if they are targeting audiences in Uganda, there is no reason for them to host their websites outside the country,” Battenberg said.
Battenberg says hosting one’s website within the country comes with its pluses including your site downloading faster, it being cheaper and being more accessible. However he says a lot of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t encourage local hosting because their networks are not configured well.
If a site is hosted in the USA or Europe it costs the ISPs US$750 per megabit per second to download websites, which they then show their clients.
Locally hosted content is free for them to access, no matter which network the content is hosted on. Currently, the ISPs are pocketing the difference, but the potential of having even cheaper rates for content that is hosted locally are quite amazing.
The trigger for Battenberg’s search engine he said was a copy of Wikipedia he was hosting locally. The copy is static, you cannot search it. “So I decided to make it searchable and after it finally worked, I was like why don’t we do the entire Ugandan Internet,” he said.
The search engine, which started as a weekend hobby has taken him a few months to create and he did this over the weekends. “Using the free Internet crawler Nutch, I developed the search engine,” Battenberg said.
When Ugandans or Africans host websites in Europe or the US, it keeps the knowledge and skills outside there, yet if the reverse was true and those servers were managed here, local ICT professionals would earn a living, which is a good thing for the economy.
From a user perspective, the search engine is all about Uganda and the speed of the network is really important. Battenberg said he does not know of a local website in Kenya or Tanzania that is indexing local content.
Mountbatten’s core business is building intelligent websites for any type of customer; provide local hosting services and training. “We also foster discussion by raising a few issues on topical ICT matters and that helps create awareness of ICT's potential,” Battenberg said.
Asked why he developed this search engine, Battenberg said, it helps to promote the use of local content, which in the end is good for everyone in the ICT field and for the people who surf the internet, which hopefully soon, will be almost everyone.
Reinier Battenberg, the brain behind this search engine calls it a sort of Google or Yahoo. The search engine which can be found at http://search.mountbatten.net is exclusively Ugandan, the same way Google or Yahoo were for the US before they spread beyond the US borders.
Battenberg says the search engine; the first of its kind in Uganda and possibly the East Africa region, is limited to searching websites that are within Uganda and are connected to local Ugandan internet.
“It lets you search Uganda-based websites. People say there is no local content but we have indexed all Ugandan web pages. They are just over 100,000 pages and that is quite substantial. So the argument that there is no local content is not entirely true,” Battenberg said.
Battenberg who is also the director Mountbatten ldt., a local web hosting and developing provider says local hosting in Africa is underestimated and a lot of internet users don’t know what local content is, but that there is a lot of potential for locally hosted Uganda websites with local content.
“It could be your local lawyer, accountant, dentist – all these people need websites and if they are targeting audiences in Uganda, there is no reason for them to host their websites outside the country,” Battenberg said.
Battenberg says hosting one’s website within the country comes with its pluses including your site downloading faster, it being cheaper and being more accessible. However he says a lot of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t encourage local hosting because their networks are not configured well.
If a site is hosted in the USA or Europe it costs the ISPs US$750 per megabit per second to download websites, which they then show their clients.
Locally hosted content is free for them to access, no matter which network the content is hosted on. Currently, the ISPs are pocketing the difference, but the potential of having even cheaper rates for content that is hosted locally are quite amazing.
The trigger for Battenberg’s search engine he said was a copy of Wikipedia he was hosting locally. The copy is static, you cannot search it. “So I decided to make it searchable and after it finally worked, I was like why don’t we do the entire Ugandan Internet,” he said.
The search engine, which started as a weekend hobby has taken him a few months to create and he did this over the weekends. “Using the free Internet crawler Nutch, I developed the search engine,” Battenberg said.
When Ugandans or Africans host websites in Europe or the US, it keeps the knowledge and skills outside there, yet if the reverse was true and those servers were managed here, local ICT professionals would earn a living, which is a good thing for the economy.
From a user perspective, the search engine is all about Uganda and the speed of the network is really important. Battenberg said he does not know of a local website in Kenya or Tanzania that is indexing local content.
Mountbatten’s core business is building intelligent websites for any type of customer; provide local hosting services and training. “We also foster discussion by raising a few issues on topical ICT matters and that helps create awareness of ICT's potential,” Battenberg said.
Asked why he developed this search engine, Battenberg said, it helps to promote the use of local content, which in the end is good for everyone in the ICT field and for the people who surf the internet, which hopefully soon, will be almost everyone.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
First CDMA operator launches Uganda operations
The first Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mobile telephone operator in Uganda, I-telecom has launched its operations in Uganda’s highly competitive telecommunications market – bringing to six the number of mobile telephone operators.
I-telecom has initially invested some US$30 million in its Uganda operation, which apparently covers only half of the country from east to west according to Augustine Mulenga, the chief executive officer of the company.
“Our investment will rise to more than $100 million over the next 18 months when we hope to have expanded coverage to reach the entire country,” Mulenga said in an interview.
Mulenga said I-telecom is anchored on the latest CDMA platform which performs faster than the GSM platform. All the other five operators operate on the GSM platform, which seems to be the preferred platform in this part of the world.
“We promise our subscribers that we shall bring to them the best products and services in voice and data networks and solutions,” Mulenga said.
Mulenga said I-telecom will employ the more powerful and high performance EVDO technology that also enables high speed wireless broadband connectivity.
I-telecom has been testing its service with about 1,000 subscribers for the last eleven months from across the country from the east to the west.
Mulenga said that their company was way above other players in the market because of the technology they are using.
I-telecom has apparently entered the market with the cheapest call offerings on the market today. While a call especially on the large players today costs about 20 US cents at peak hours at, I-Telecom has come into the market with a call costing about 12 US cents at peak time.
He added that I-telecom has been testing its services with about 1,000 customers for the last 11 months from the East to the deepest end of Western Uganda.
“We have certainty of service from where the sun rises to where it sets across the south and central Uganda. We shall steadily roll out to the rest of the country,” Mulenga said.
Asked how he intends to survive in a brutal market that analysts have described as saturated, Mulenga said there was still room for business.
“See Uganda has a population of more than 30million. And about 55% of this population is actively working but the telecom industry is just jostling for 8-10million people. It means that we have an opportunity to command and bring on board customers that other operators have not been able to attract,” Mulenga said.
I-telecom is a joint venture between local Uganda investors with investors from southern Sudan, where they run the pioneer mobile service provider Gemtel.
While CDMA has been the dominant network standard for North America and parts of Asia, its take up of preference has been limited with almost a few mobile phone networks in the region running on the GSM standard.
In Kenya, it is only Orange/Telkom Kenya that runs on the CDMA standard while in Tanzania, it is only the national operator Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation Limited (TTCL) that runs some of its services on the CDMA standard.
As I-telecom commences its operations, another provider, Sure Telecom from South Africa is waiting in the wings readying itself for launch.
I-telecom has initially invested some US$30 million in its Uganda operation, which apparently covers only half of the country from east to west according to Augustine Mulenga, the chief executive officer of the company.
“Our investment will rise to more than $100 million over the next 18 months when we hope to have expanded coverage to reach the entire country,” Mulenga said in an interview.
Mulenga said I-telecom is anchored on the latest CDMA platform which performs faster than the GSM platform. All the other five operators operate on the GSM platform, which seems to be the preferred platform in this part of the world.
“We promise our subscribers that we shall bring to them the best products and services in voice and data networks and solutions,” Mulenga said.
Mulenga said I-telecom will employ the more powerful and high performance EVDO technology that also enables high speed wireless broadband connectivity.
I-telecom has been testing its service with about 1,000 subscribers for the last eleven months from across the country from the east to the west.
Mulenga said that their company was way above other players in the market because of the technology they are using.
I-telecom has apparently entered the market with the cheapest call offerings on the market today. While a call especially on the large players today costs about 20 US cents at peak hours at, I-Telecom has come into the market with a call costing about 12 US cents at peak time.
He added that I-telecom has been testing its services with about 1,000 customers for the last 11 months from the East to the deepest end of Western Uganda.
“We have certainty of service from where the sun rises to where it sets across the south and central Uganda. We shall steadily roll out to the rest of the country,” Mulenga said.
Asked how he intends to survive in a brutal market that analysts have described as saturated, Mulenga said there was still room for business.
“See Uganda has a population of more than 30million. And about 55% of this population is actively working but the telecom industry is just jostling for 8-10million people. It means that we have an opportunity to command and bring on board customers that other operators have not been able to attract,” Mulenga said.
I-telecom is a joint venture between local Uganda investors with investors from southern Sudan, where they run the pioneer mobile service provider Gemtel.
While CDMA has been the dominant network standard for North America and parts of Asia, its take up of preference has been limited with almost a few mobile phone networks in the region running on the GSM standard.
In Kenya, it is only Orange/Telkom Kenya that runs on the CDMA standard while in Tanzania, it is only the national operator Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation Limited (TTCL) that runs some of its services on the CDMA standard.
As I-telecom commences its operations, another provider, Sure Telecom from South Africa is waiting in the wings readying itself for launch.
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