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Jonah Iboma ETranzact, Nigeria’s multichannel payment solutions provider, has extended its services to other African countries. This follows its signing of agreements with utility services providers and other organisations in Ghana and Zimbabwe. Some of the partners to the agreement, the firm said, include Ghana Telecom and Mutual Fund Administrators in Ghana. In Zimbabwe, the partners are Zimbabwe Electronic Supply Authority, TelOne, Telecel Zimbabwe, City of Harare, City of Bulawayo and City of Mutare. The services that are being facilitated by eTranzact cuts across finance, education, telecom, water and electricity bill payments. eTranzact, according to details made available to our correspondent on Friday, said it had installed online fee payments system at both Zenith University College and Telecom University College, in addition to micro-finance payments for the Databank’s ePack and mFund, all in Ghana. Another service being facilitated by eTranzact is Ghana Telecom’s onetouch se...

Jonah Iboma ipNX Nigeria Limited is to invest about $100m (about N12.8bn) to implement a broadband network over the next two years. The company would also invest in recruitment and training of of technical personnel as well as setting up of a customer contact centres to aid its service delivery. According to the Group Managing Director of ipNX, Mr. Ejovi Aror, after three years of research and development, the firm introduced a wireless broadband solution designed to offer residential and small office subscribers access to the Internet. Called iWireless, the new broadband solution would be made commercially available from the first week of April this year. Aror said that ipNX developed the solution in partnership with SOMA Networks, a member of the WiMAX Forum, a body that promotes the use of Wimax for telecoms services. He added that the solution marks the entry of ipNX into the mass data market having spent years servicing multinationals firms mainly. He explained that a lot of resea...

Jonah Iboma An independent firm might oversee the anti-theft scheme soon to be introduced by the Federal Government to check the high incidence of theft of mobile phones in the country. Sources close to the Nigerian Communications Commission said that several firms had submitted bids for the project and that the commission was considering which of them would handle the project. Sources, however, confirmed that the telecommunications regulatory body might settle for an independent firm that would, among other things, keep a database of stolen phones and make them available to operators so that the phones could be demobilised on their networks.One of the bidders is the IDSV International, a firm headed by a United States-based Nigerian telecoms expert, Mr. Prince UchenduOne of the reasons why the regulatory body might consider an independent firm was the need to avoid duplication of efforts by the operators.The Executive Chairman of NCC, Mr. Ernest Ndukwe, had on Thursday given an in...

Four new subscribers have emerged winners of new Honda Accord I-vtec cars in the South South zone in the Globacom N750 seasons recharge promotion. Globacom said the winners were determined in an electronic draw held for its subscribers in the Port Harcourt region, comprising Rivers, Bayelsa and Imo states, who recharged their phones with the special N750 recharge card denomination within the commencement of the promotion on December 1 last year and the draw date. At the end of the draws held at the Bouganvillea Hotel in Port Harcourt, the four became winners of Honda Accord cars. The four cars were part of the 40 which Globacom is offering to prepaid subscribers in the promotion. The Port Harcourt Regional Manager, Globacom, Sam Edoho, said the promotion underscored Globacom’s commitment to continue to improve the quality of lives of its subscribers. "The N750 Recharge promo is meant to thank our subscribers for their patronage. We acknowledge the goodwill and tremendous support w...

The Chairman of Celtel International, Dr. Mo Ibrahim, has been honoured in Barcelona, Spain , by the GSM Association with the its highest award, the GSMA Chairman’s Award 2007. The founder of Celtel International, a pan-African mobile operator, was presented with the award in recognition of his outstanding achievement in supporting the growth and vitality of the global mobile telephony community. The award, which is sponsored by Fortune magazine, was the highlight of the Global Mobile Awards. The group eulogized Ibrahim for giving Africans a voice describing him as a visionary and the founding father of the African mobile industry. In the words of GSMA Chairman, Craig Ehrlich, who presented the award. "This is a man, who is in many ways, the founding father of African mobile communications, a visionary wireless technician and mobile businessman, whose commitment to both the industry and the continent has helped the world to hear Africa’s voice."

Progenics Corp Limited, a Nigerian software and systems integrator in the financial services sector, has witnessed an increase in the number of firms signed up to its capital market application solution, Symbols. Symbols, a comprehensive and integrated investment management and stock broking application solution, was designed using advanced computer aided software-engineering techniques which has helped address the need of many local stockbrokery firms. In details made available to our correspondent on Friday, the Head of Business Development, Progenics, Mr. Tunde Yemi-Daniel, said that the companies that had signed up for Symbols included UBA Asset Management Limited, Cross World securities, Diamond Bank Securities limited and Express Discount Portfolio Management limited among others. According to him, Progenics had recently enhanced its features by adding another module, the Asset Management. The module, he said, would take care of fund management, mutual fund/unit trust requirement...

Jonah Iboma Increased access and usage of mobile communications provide a powerful economic growth engine, which governments can fuel by lowering taxes on mobile services and handsets, according to a new study undertaken by Deloitte for the GSM Association. The GSMA is the global trade association representing 700 GSM mobile phone operators in 217 countries of the world. In addition, more than 180 manufacturers and suppliers support the association’s initiatives as key partners. The report issued by the association last week, found that in a developing country, an increase of 10 percentage points in mobile penetration would lift that country’s annual economic growth rate by 1.2 per centage points. GSMA stated that this situation represented a major uplift - if the proportion of people with a mobile phone in an economy, growing at four per cent a year, rose from 10 per cent to 20 per cent, that would boost the economic growth rate to 5.2 per cent a year. According to the study, despite ...

Jonah Iboma Quickplus Commu-nications Limited, an indigenous software company, and Busy Infotech Limited, developer of Busy brand of software solutions, plan to build a software academy where Nigerian information technology professionals will be certified. The academy, according to both firms, will represent an expansion of the current partnership between them. When established, the academy will train software professionals in the area of accounting, taxation and auditing using the latest trends in information technology. The graduates of the academy will be given international certification in Busy software solutions. Busy is one of the fastest growing accounting packages in the world. The product, which entered the Nigerian market last year, is already being used by over 30 companies, including accounting firms and Capital Airlines. It has over 100 clients in India and is widely used in Pakistan. The Managing Director, Quickplus Communications Company Limited, Mr. David Ayomidotun, r...

Jonah Iboma Ghana’s Minister of Presidential Affairs, Mr Kwawo Mpiani, has proclaimed Globacom Limited, as a credible and good corporate citizen that should be invited to invest in Ghana. He also commended the company for donating one billion cedis to Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary. At a presentation ceremony held at the Presidential Castle, Accra on Thursday, Mr Mpiani who doubles as the Chief of Staff at the Presidency, thanked Globacom for its generous donation even though the firm, it has not started operating in Ghana. Mpiani said he was particularly impressed with Globacom’s operational achievements within just three-and-a-half years in operation. "We have investigated you and confirmed that you are a credible organisation. I am happy to note the rapid progress made by your company within such a short time. This is a rare achievement and yours is the kind of corporate citizens that should be invited to invest in Ghana", he said. He pledged the support of the peop...

Jonah Iboma Six universities and poly-technics have installed eTranzact payment system, including the three campuses of the Nigeria Law School. eTranzact, a multichannel payment solutions provider, has linked these schools to its payment channel, which enables students to pay their tuition and other school related charges online. In addition, the schools will be able to monitor payments as they are made, thereby reducing to the barest minimum the amount of time it takes to confirm payments. The payment system, initiated by eTranzact in conjunction with Socketworks and some banks in Nigeria, has been installed at the University of Ilorin; University of Jos; University of Ibadan; Ambrose Alli University; Covenant University; and the Yaba College of Technology. Some others have commissioned the payment system. Before long, all tertiary institutions in Nigeria would be linked to the online payment system, says Mr. Valentine Obi, Chief Executive Officer of eTranzact. The cards allow the stu...

Jonah Iboma Microsoft will on Thursday, inaugurate the Windows Vista™ operating system and Microsoft® Office 2007. The company said, “With the product available in over 39,000 retail stores worldwide including our local PC Outlet Store at the Palms Shopping Mall, Lagos, you can of course, buy a copy from retail outlets right away. In fact, one very lucky Nigerian shopper will get an invitation to the February 22 launch event in Lagos and a copy of Windows Vista signed by Microsoft Chairman, BillGates.” The Marketing Manager of Microsoft Nigeria, Mr. Victor Okigbo said that Microsoft Nigeria was collaborating closely with business partners and distributors notably HP, Zinox, Intel, Coscharis Technologies, Technology Distributors, Computer Warehouse and Bi- Traxaxxent as part of the product launch process. The events in both Abuja and Lagos will include high-impact product demonstrations, and top level interactions. “The way that Nigerians work, play and communicate will be profoundly af...

Jonah Iboma Symbology, a bar code invented by Intermec Technologies Corporation of United States of America, is now available in Nigeria following the firm’s commencement of operations in Nigeria. A barcode is a machine-readable representation of information in a visual format on a surface. They are present on the surfaces of the packages of most products especially manufactured by well-established firms. Though originally barcodes stored data in the widths and spacings of printed parallel lines, they also come in patterns of dots, concentric circles, and hidden within images. Speaking at the launch in Lagos on Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ayo Eso of 3Consulting, the sole partner of Intermec in the country, said the Solutions provide supply chain information products, services and systems to companies in hundreds of industries around the world. He explained that supply chain information systems allow companies to compile previously unheard of amounts of information from one e...

Jonah Iboma About 10,000 point of sales terminals are to be deployed immediately into the Nigerian market by a Nigerian firm, J.D. Kutons Nigeria Limited to promote electronic vending services. The firm said in press conference in Lagos on Wednesday that it will be working with major telecommunications firms in the country for the deployment of the PoS terminals which would vend airtime wirelessly all across the country at the first stage.. According to the Chairman of the firm, Mr. Ajibade Oke, the electronic vending service called Everlasting is designed to make it easy for electronic transactions to take place in the country and as a result the system would work with General Packet Radio Service available on the networks of mobile phone operators. He added that besides vending of airtime, Everlasting would add other services including money transfer in the course of the development of solutions for the public GPRS is a mobile data service available on GSM networks allowing for vario...

Celtel Nigeria Limited has signed a bi-directional interconnection agreement with Interconnect Clearinghouse Nigeria Limited, Nigeria’s first transit exchange. In details made available to our correspondent on Friday, Chief Business Development Officer of ICN, Mr. Michael Tosin-Oni, said the agreement would allow for the flow of telecommunications traffic to and from both parties in the standard operational procedure of bi-directional traffic interconnection.’Legal / Regulatory Manager of ICN, Mr. Damian Udeh, added that ICN and Celtel were currently putting finishing touches to the technical aspect of the arrangement.ICN said, when fully implemented, the agreement would allow Celtel to enjoy the advantages of employing the services of a technically-sound and time-tested clearinghouse with its cost effectiveness and attendant ease of debt reconciliation and collection. “This will enable Celtel focus on its primary task of network and subscriber base expansion to be able to continue to ...

Jonah Iboma Multi-Links Limited has inaugurated a service that allows its subscribers to use their mobile phones anywhere it has network coverage.Our correspondent gathered in Lagos on Saturday that the service, which comes with a new numbering plan, is part of the fallout of the firm’s acquisition of a Unified Access Licence. The Executive Director, Multi-Links, Chief Ezekiel Fatoye, explained that the numbering plan, which has a prefix, 07027, would consist of 11 digits similar to what mobile firms currently used.Fatoye said this would give its customers freedom to use their phones in all parts of the country where Multi-Links has established presence. “In other words, mobile customers of our network are now free to use our services in several places where we have signals,” he saidMulti-Links is thus the first to consolidate the unified licence, which it won along with three others in 2006 – Intecellular, Starcomms and, Prestel.The firm added that the new regime would allow present c...

Jonah Iboma Software testing, an emerging segment of the Nigeria’s information technology sector, has been rated to be worth over N130bn annually. The Principal Consultant of TC-QA Associates, Mr. Akinwale Akingbade, who revealed this, noted that globally, the practice was a big business, adding that in the United States, the market was worth about $60bn. Akingbade, who recently led the delegation that recently secured the Nigeria’s admission into the International Software Quality Board, noted that the value of the sector was because of the growing awareness by firms in the country of the need to ensure quality of software systems used in their organisations. According to him, the software testing market in Nigeria was still evolving and was worth around $1bn. According to him, the rising interest in software testing is based to a great extent on the growing realisation that poor software quality and poor software development processes, are a major drain on business profitability. He ...

Jonah Iboma Efforts at bridging the Digital Divide seem to be yielding very little fruit in Africa. Jonah Iboma examines the problems. Internet connection and use remain low in Africa in general, even though some progress had been made in terms of connections recorded. However, put against the rest of the world, it appears that Africa is lagging further behind. According to latest reports, while the continent has witnessed some growth, governments’ failure to open markets and subsequently, drive down costs have made it difficult for the market to grow fast. According to a recent report by South African research group, BMI-TechKnowledge, though Broadband Internet connections in Africa are expected to more than double by 2011, this is still not significant enough compared to other places. The report added that High-speed Internet connections in Africa — including Digital Subscriber Link, WiMax and wireless technologies such as 3G – are likely to rise to seven million by 2011 from three m...

Jonah Iboma Covenant University has entered into a fresh pact with New Horizons for the training of the students of the higher institution in various areas of information technology.Under the partnership, details of which were made available to our correspondent on Monday, each student of Covenant University would undergo selected certification courses, obtain international certification and graduate with additional IT skills.The Managing Director of New Horizons, Mr. Tim Akano, said the arrangement was designed to ensure that when students graduated, they would already be ready for paid employment. At a signing ceremony held recently, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof Aize Obayan, said that the university’s vision on academic excellence was premised on producing graduates who were both academically and professionally relevant by ensuring that the students are given the opportunity to acquire latest certification training in ICT while still pursing their normal academic ...

Jonah Iboma The deployment of electronic governance solutions in Nigeria may not yield desired results if the schemes are devoid of an audit component, a technology expert has warned. The Consulting Manager, EDP Audit and Security Associates, Mr. Christian Ekeigwe, believes that except government agencies deploying electronic solutions for the delivery of government activities understand the full implications of such solutions, they stand the risk of deploying the wrong solutions.He said, “The auditability of e-government seems to have been escaping our attention. With various bold initiatives of the government in e-governance at various levels of government, it is important for us to start sensitizing government officials and agencies on the risks of technology and the need for robust technology audit capability in the sector.”The call is timely given that electronic governance, which involves deploying IT-enabled means to deliver government services, has increasingly been growing in...

Jonah Iboma T-Mobile Netherlands has selected Nokia to provide managed services for its WCDMA 3G and GSM networks. With Nokia managed services, T-Mobile can reduce its operating expenditure and further improve network quality while freeing resources to its core business and customers. Under its first managed services deal with T-Mobile International, Nokia is providing T-Mobile Netherlands with field operations and spare part management. Field operations include preventive maintenance and incident management, while the spare parts management is an essential part of maintaining high-quality network operations. “Staying in control of our network is crucial to us, but we also needed more time and resources to concentrate on our core business. Nokia’s field operations and spare part management allow us to do exactly that. Our cooperation so far with Nokia has built our trust in their ability to provide managed services in addition to network equipment,” says Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, Technolog...