IDC Middle East, Africa, & Turkey is delighted to announce the full schedule for its prestigious IT Security Roadshow 2009.

Running under the theme of 'Balancing Reality and Perception in a New Economic Era', the conference will open in Istanbul on February 17, 2009, before moving on to seven other key cities throughout the region: Ankara, Casablanca, Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Dubai, and Riyadh.

The perception of IT Security has evolved significantly over ....... more >>

A retiree of the Nigerian Law School, Mr. Oluwamuyiwa Okanlawon on Saturday won a brand new BMW 3 Series at the Abuja edition of the Bigger and Easier Glo Win & Rule promo draw held at the Old Parade Ground.

Okanlawon could not hide his excitement when his number flashed on the huge screen as winner of the star prize of the night. He was one of the lucky winners in the promo, packaged by Globacom to reward its subscribers nationwide for their loyalty to the network....... more >>

Time Warner has named Google's advertising sales guru Tim Armstrong as chairman and chief executive of its troubled AOL unit.
Current AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco and President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Grant will leave AOL after a transition period.

Armstrong, a senior vice president at Google in charge of sales, will take over the top post at AOL immediately, the company said in a press release.

Time Warner's management is hoping that Armstrong's magic touch will help revive the ailing AOL......more >>

The winners of the special prizes on offer at the 21st PanAfrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou) or FESPACO has been announced.

During the ceremony to announce the winners of over US$ 100,000 worth of special prizes in Sembene Ousmane conference room, at the Azalai Hotel in Ouagadougou, Zain's special prize was won by Haile Gerima of Ethiopia for her movie 'Teza'........ more >>

Seven winners comprising three students, two civil servants, a banker and an accountant received their prizes recently as the presentation of cars to winners of the Glo Win n Rule promo resumes in Lagos.
The lucky Glo subscribers were among the 100 winners drawn in Lagos during the mega draw of the promo late last year.

Globacom said the prizes are being presented to the winners in batches in their home states. Some of the winners of the mega draw had earlier received their prizes in Abuja, Aba, and Ibadan.

At the first Lagos prize presentation ceremony which held at Union Bank Sports Centre, Dolapo Alo, a banker with FCMB and Adebimpe Akintola, a staff of Mushin Local Government Council went home with a Peugeot 307 saloon car each..... more >>

MTN, one of Nigeria's leading telecommunications companies has reaffirmed its commitment to playing a role in driving socio- economic growth and development in Nigeria.

According to Ahmad Farroukh, the company's chief executive officer, “one of our key objectives when we launched our operation in 2001 was to use telecommunications as a platform to unleash Nigeria's strong potential for development”.

“In providing telecommunications services to over 25 million active subscribers,” he said, “the MTN operation has registered an impact that clearly underscores the wide-ranging economic multiplier nature of investment in telecommunications. ..... more >>

Nigeria's communications regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has commended Globacom for its roaming services which it described as the best in the telecommunications market in Nigeria.

Head of Consumer Affairs' Bureau of the commission, Lolia Emakpore noted that Globacom had well-packaged roaming services even for Pre-Paid users on its network. “It was the first network that made roaming available for its pre-paid users as well as post-paid users and it also avails consumers of information on these ..... more >>

Visafone, one of Nigeria's leading CDMA operators, is again set to touch the lives of its teeming subscribers with the unending joy of communications following the unveiling of its latest product, Visa Chill.

Visa Chill is a new package offering Visafone subscribers the opportunity to make free midnight calls between the hours of 12am and 4.30am every day.

Visa Chill is the latest in an impressive list of “firsts” that the company has rolled out since inception. By being the first CDMA operator to launch free midnight calls for its subscribers, Visafone has once again demonstrated the pioneering spirit that has consistently drawn praise and accolades from analysts and industry experts over the last 12 months......... more >>

Globacom's mobile subsidiary in Ghana, Glo Mobile is partnering with Chinese vendor ZTE to deploy additional access network infrastructure including 800 indoor and outdoor Basic Trans-receiver Stations (BTS) for its imminent roll out.

A report by Modern Ghana said the Ghana access network, ZTE, is deploying for Glo is separate from the deployments Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei already handling for Glo. In addition to the 800 BTS, the ZTE deployment also includes three Base Switching Centres (BSCs), 45 NodeB, two RNC, 162 PDH MW links, EDGE and HSPA, OMCs, planning and optimization tools. ......... more >>

Egyptian telecoms group Orascom Telecom has revealed a 76% slump in net profit for the twelve-month period to 31 December 2008 to EGP2.46 billion (USD431 million). The company attributed the fall to exceptional one-off gains made in the 2007 fiscal year.

In 2007 Orascom generated USD761 million from the sale of its Indian operations, as well as USD920 million after divesting its interest in Iraqi cellco Iraqna.
Revenue for the group however rose 13% year-on-year to EGP29.2 billion, whilst earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up 15% against the same period last year at EGP13.1 billion ...more >>

What is broadband all about?

Broadband simply speaking is all about fast Internet access. You know we started with dial-up Internet access which was generally slow.

As demand for Internet services was increasing and people began downloading pictures and videos from the Internet, the narrow band which we used to have became insufficient and there was the need to increase the band to the size of the pipe that carries the traffic, hence the need for broadband.

The definition for broadband is always a shifting one, but certainly it is an Internet service of not less than 256 kilobyte per second.

Of recent, the NCC has been canvassing for massive broadband deployment in the country, how feasible is this? ...... more >>

(1) Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)

DSL is a wireline transmission technology that transmits data faster over traditional copper telephone lines already installed to homes and businesses. DSL-based broadband provides transmission speeds ranging from several hundred Kbps to millions of bits per second (Mbps). The availability and speed of your DSL service may depend on the distance from your home or business to the closest telephone company facility.

The following are types of DSL transmission technologies:

Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) used primarily by residential customers, such as Internet surfers, who receive a lot of data but do not send much. ADSL typically provides faster speed in the downstream direction than the upstream direction. ADSL allows faster downstream data transmission over the same line used to provide voice service, without disrupting regular telephone calls on that line......... more >>

Google discovered a privacy glitch that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on the company's online Google Docs service.

“We've identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document,” the company said in a note, quoted at TechCrunch that the search giant sent to affected people. “The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.”........... more >>

Celcom, Malaysia's second largest wireless operator by subscribers, has said it aims to expand its mobile broadband subscriber base by 120% in 2009 following the launch of a new pre-paid tariff; the new service will cost MYR25 (USD6.84) per month.

According to News Agency Bernama, Celcom claimed to have approximately 270,000 mobile broadband customers at the end of February 2009, having registered a 300% year-on-year growth in 2008. The operator also said it had mobile broadband coverage of almost 70% of the populated areas of the country........ more >>

Ericsson has showcased broadband VDSL2 technology in Nigeria, achieving data transfer rates of up to 0.5Gbps. The new technology provides greater bandwidth than traditional ADSL, and will allow operators to offer customers low-cost, high-performance connectivity and services such as HDTV and video-on-demand (VoD).

Hakan Eriksson, CTO of Ericsson said: “This demonstration confirms Ericsson's leadership in broadband access technology and our commitment to the continued research and development of DSL technology to improve operators' business with new access solutions.......... more >>

MultiChoice Nigeria, the subscription management company for DStv in the country has announced the termination of the K ALL DAY kiddies Channel (KAIDY) on channel 300 of the DStv bouquet with effect from 31 March 2009.

A release by Segun Fayose of the Corporate Communications and Public Affairs department of the company stated that the channel will no longer be carried on the DStv bouquet because of its steady decline in value proposition for the DStv subscribers.

The MultiChoice Nigeria spokesperson said the channel will no longer be carried because it is no longer viable due to the fact that many cartoons and shows currently airing on the channel are also available on other Children's channels available ........... more >>