LATEST research on Nomophobia explosion indicates that more
mobile phone users are getting addicted to their phones and when separated
could cause some fuss, which may not be entirely pleasant. So, beware!
Experts at the free and open source online encyclopedia,
Wikipedia, defined Nomophobia as the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.
The term is drawn from an abbreviation for “no-mobile-phone phobia.”
DigitalSENSE News investigations revealed that ‘Nomophobia’
was coined during a study by the UK Post Office which commissioned YouGov,
another UK-based research organisation to look at anxieties suffered by mobile
phone users in 2008. Just as women worry more about losing their phones, than
men, who usually carry two phones.
With the use of mobile phones globally, the figure of those
affected by Nomophobia, especially in Nigeria with over 136, 038, 021 connected
lines as at April 2012; may have risen to 66 per cent in population, and are
likely to be affected by Nomophobia.
According to the latest study by the United Kingdom
(UK)-based SecurEnvoy, an estimated 66 per cent of the population is at risk of
suffering Nomophobia and equating that to the 101, 077, 658 active lines in
Nigeria, could mean that an estimated 66, 711, 250 subscribers may be at risk of
Nomophobia.
However, a Lagos-based spear parts dealer situated at the
Westminister, along the popular Oshodi-Apapa Express way, Olodi-Apapa area of
Lagos, Mr. Celestine Dom, is a typical modern-day Nigerian whose small scale
business of selling new tyres of all sizes, revolves on his two mobile phones.
As said by Dom, his business now depends largely on the
number of calls he receives per week, of which 85 per cent are business calls.
For this reason alone, he would not dare to forget his two phones anywhere or
even distancing himself for 10 minutes without checking if he had a missed
call.
“I can’t stay without my phones for a whole day and which
batteries are fully charged,” he said.
For him, there are two things that could lead to him feeling
Nomophobic; if those mobile phones get missing or the batteries just went
blank, saying, “Whenever the battery of any of the phones is down, I feel
uncomfortable and make every effort to ensure its powered on in the shortest
time.”
This, Dom says, is because during such a time, the mere
thought that customers may be calling that particular line in trying to reach
him, spurs him to ensure it’s powered on as soon as possible.
Dependence on his mobile phones for livelihood and
sustaining of his small enterprise is not a joke as he openly berates
co-dealers, that if their phones are not working, it means they are not working
themselves.
Celestine Dom represents an average Nigerian, who now finds
it pretty difficult to forget his mobile phones at home, not to mention distancing
himself from the mobile device. Unknown to him, he is suffering from
Nomophobia.
Though the case of nomophobia is yet to be clinically
proclaimed in Nigeria, there is evident that more Nigerians may be in the
league of those affected with this affliction originating from loss of contacts
on basic phone availability.
Dr. Muideen Owolabi Bakare of the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric
Hospital, New Haven, Enugu, Enugu State, told DigitalSENSE News exclusively,
there are two categories of people who are usually involved in usage of a
product or device.
One, he said, are those who are not bothered whether they
are with their phones or not. That is, they are not addicted to their phones
and rarely communicate with the phones. He stressed, this category, may include
old and illiterate parents in the villages.
The other category, Dr. Bakare noted, of course, are those
who are addicted, who feel devastated if they lose their phones.
He explained that their daily routine activities revolves
around their phones and solves a lot of communication and transaction problems
with their phones.
“They feel incapacitated without their phones and include
the youths and some middle age individuals,” Dr. Bakare said, it is an area for
further research.
Reacting, an ardent mobile phone user, Mr. Ben Uzor, told
DigitalSENSE News that if he ever forgets his mobile phone on his way to work,
even if he has reached the office, he would find a way of getting the phone as
quick as possible.
“I feel incomplete without my mobile phone. I will go home
and pick it up,” he declared.
Meanwhile the UK-based survey of 1,000 people in employment,
conducted using OnePoll, revealed that two thirds of respondents fear losing or
being without their mobile phone.
DigitalSENSE News notes that the study, sponsored by
SecurEnvoy, also stated that global leader of Tokenless two-factor
authentication, reveals 41per cent of people interviewed, in an effort to stay
connected, have two phones or more.
Chief Technical Officer and co-founder, SecurEnvoy, Mr. Andy
Kemshall observed that there is another study into mobile phone use that found
people check their phones, on average, “34 times a day so it wouldn’t take long
for you to realise if you’d misplaced your device.”
Rasheed
Adegoke is the Group Head,
Information Technology (IT) at First Bank of Nigeria plc. In this exclusive
interview REMMY NWEKE, he says FBN would reduce transaction time to two
minutes. Excerpt:
Let’s start by you telling us how your team has been using
technology to drive FirstBank’s services?
As you are probably aware,
First Bank is the leading institution in terms of deployment of technology and
the use of technology to deliver superior banking services to its customers. In
the past few years we have actually focused on what you would call a second
phase of our transformation efforts which started from the Century Two project
that saw us deploying modern technologies way back in the early part of the 21st
century, around 2000 to 2002.
Now, what we have done in the last three years is to focus on a
coordinated transformation of the business with technology again being at the
core of that transformation effort. So, in the last three years, we have
improved our technology infrastructure to generally improve the reliability of
our services across channels; both at the branch and our electronic delivery
channels.
If you relate that to the growth that we’ve also seen in the
numbers that First Bank is churning out, you will see that there is consistency
and a direct correlation between the improvements that we are achieving in the
technology and service delivery space and the customer patronage and growth in
our business both in terms of size or volume and profitability.
Therefore, in the last three years we have doubled our balance
sheet and we have also increased our customer numbers from under 5 million to
over 7 million accounts today and that also has translated into the share of
wallet that we have of each customer. We have also been able to generate a lot
more transactions from our existing customers in that process.
Other statistics that points to the impact of the transformation
of our technology include things like volumes of transactions across electronic
channels and you would see that First Bank leads other providers. We have more
than 30 per cent share of the issued cards volume in the market space and we
also process more than double the volume of transactions of the number 2 bank
on the industry’s payment switching network.
That basically summarizes the impact that technology
transformation has made on First Bank operation in the last few years. I think
I will end that by saying what underscores our usage of technology in First
Bank is the award we got last year which was tagged the Innovation Award from
the Bankers Magazine, that award came out of a number of initiatives but
the core initiative then was the introduction of the biometric ATM. We are the
first bank and still today the only bank that have biometric ATM services,
although we have not extensively rolled-out, but we have deployed it in a
number of our branches.
For the benefit of the ordinary Nigerians, can you give us some
insights to what you mean by biometric ATM?
Rasheed Adegoke
Well, the biometric ATM essentially like any other ATM except that
we have enhanced it with the ability to read fingerprints as an additional
security feature to protect our customers against fraudsters. Basically, what
happens when you go to an ATM today; you need your card and a PIN number.
Although there has been a lot of effort on the part of the industry to improve security
like the change in card standard which is not limited to First Bank alone. It
was an industry wide initiative to move from the Magnetic Stripe card which was
what was initially introduced into the Nigerian market, and which is also a
relatively insecure platform to the Chip and PIN platform, which essentially is
a much more secured card than the Magnetic Stripe card that could easily be
cloned by fraudsters.
So, the industry has done that move, however we at First Bank are
“upping the game” and saying that there are a number of our customers that are
in the rural areas, maybe that’s also because First Bank has the spread that
most other banks do not have, and we have the experience of serving both the
urban rich as well as the rural poor.
Some of the rural masses are not too good with numbers so when you
say they should choose a PIN number, you won’t be surprised if someone chooses
1111 and so, if that person misplaces his or her card, it is very easy for a
fraudster to guess the PIN number, so for such customers you also have to get
their fingerprint with a biometric ATM. That’s the extra level of protection
that we have introduced into the market place.
Most banks in the country presently, including First Bank seems to
fall in line for foreign of IT applications, and from your own perspective,
what would be your rating of local applications in Nigeria, basically?
Well, I will be very frank and objective, treating it like a
balance. I think you would say that we do have skills within the Nigerian market
place to manage IT. We have skills to do software development, however what
tends to happen within the software space itself is that there are various
categories of software, from the system software which are like the operating
systems like Windows, UNIX, and the iOS that runs on Apple platform to business
applications starting from simple human resource management, payroll
applications to very complex systems like the ERPs that manage entire
manufacturing operations or core banking software that are used to run banks.
Now, we are not playing at all in the system software space so we
do not have, for instance, the operating system developed by Nigerians, even
though you might have a few Nigerians contributing to the development of
operating systems because each of the big players like Microsoft do have a
reasonable population of Nigerians within their employ.
We also do have freelance programmers that contribute to open
source software like Linux development and some of them are Nigerians. However,
when it comes to actually having or owning a branded operating system product,
Nigeria is not playing in that space. Now when we come to business application
space we also have a number of Nigerian companies that have played very well in
building human resource applications, small scale ERP solutions, and one
company comes to mind easily, Systemspecs with their human manager application
which have been highly successful by all means.
On enterprise applications, we also have a number of players that
have attempted to play in that space and not all have been equally successful,
but we have some players that have stayed upwards of 20 years in that space so
you would say they have achieved some level of success and again a name that
comes to mind is Computer Systems Associates; they have a core banking software
which has been sold not just within West Africa but also in East Africa and
other emerging markets that actually needs their solution. They have also sold
a version to microfinance banks within Nigeria.
Now coming back to the question of whether Nigerian software
companies have matured to the point of developing robust core banking software,
I would say it’s a yes and no. Yes, to the extent that the basic skills to do
it are there, and I’ve given the examples that prove that those skills are
there if we focus well enough.
However, in terms of mindset, we’re not yet there. Software
business is a long term business, so, you have to make investment for the long
term. Nigerian investors on the contrary are mostly short term investors. So
you don’t go into software with the mindset of getting back your investment in
six months or twelve months. That’s what has actually not made made-in-Nigeria
software to mature to that scale where they can easily compete with internationally
developed applications because if you are investing for the long term, it means
that you need to be able to retain certain skill set for the long-run.
If you have business architects and software architects that are
working within software companies and the turnover of your staff is maybe every
eighteen months, you have to recruit new staff because the good staff have
left, you won’t be able to actually go for the long run and these are some of
the issues that the local software developers or investors are still dealing
with.
On the other hand, you need some level of capitalization to be
able to hold on for that long in terms of being within the software development
line so that you are not hitting the market place with an under-developed
products that you want to start earning from. By and large, if we change our
focus, if we change our investment mindset and focus on software as a long term
business we can actually compete with other internationally developed
applications in Nigeria.
Earlier on, you made mention of First Bank running on Finacle 10,
what was the business decision behind this?
First Bank essentially, has four key drivers of growth or four
pillars of the business strategy; one focus on growth, the second is on
improving service delivery and attaining service excellence, the third is
talent management being able to retain the best talent within the industry and
the fourth is performance management, both at the individual level and the
group level.
If you look at those pillars, central to it is service excellence
because every business exist for one purpose only and that purpose is to
recruit and retain profitable customers, that’s why businesses exist, so if a
business is not able to meet the needs of its customers both now and into future,
that business will not be a sustainable business.
So as a service enterprise, we need to continually improve our
service platform, as you know infrastructure is central to most things. If you
use the nation as an analogy, we are where we are partly because of failure of
infrastructure so one of the key service delivery infrastructure for a bank is
a core banking software, because really a bank’s business if we all think of it
not as much managing money but a bank’s
business is actually managing information.
Whether you are talking about ensuring that you properly keep the
information for 7million accounts and ensure that there is no mix-up in the
management of that information or you ensuring that the information required to
dispense cash at the ATM is readily available for the ATM to work. That’s what
banking is about; it’s about managing information, so we need to continually
improve that platform for managing information which is a core banking
infrastructure.
Presently, we have set aggressive target for ourselves in the area
of service excellence and our existing platform which is the Finacle 7 cannot
continue to serve us to meet those aggressive targets, so we want to be able to
be quicker in introducing new products into the market place, that’s what
Finacle 10 would give us as an edge over Finacle 7. We want to reduce the time
it takes to process the withdrawal transaction, currently we spend an average
of four (4) minutes; a customer will spend not more than four minutes in front
of a teller officer to do a withdrawal transaction, we want to halve that to
two minutes.
Yes, we have improved our infrastructure; our back-end
infrastructure, so our processing facilities are faster, but we also need to
improve on the underlining software that runs the process. We also want to
simplify our processes further in the front end such that the teller spends
less time trying to post transactions and spend more time interacting with the
customer, that will mean some improvement of our core banking infrastructure,
so all of these are the business drivers that has lead us to say we need to
upgrade to Finacle 10, because it’s going to give us much more flexible service
delivery infrastructure that would enable us achieve that level of service
excellence that we set for ourselves.
I would like to know your take on the cash-lite Lagos and eventual
deployment across the country, and what is First Bank’s readiness in the long
run?
First, I would say that the cashless or cash-lite drive is the
right move, we at First Bank have been moving in that direction before CBN
(Central Bank of Nigeria) came up with the policy in order to drive it across
the industry. Which is why, if you go back to my initial summary, some of the
highlights that I made were the investments we made in actually enhancing our
electronic delivery channels which has translated into us, I mean First Bank
achieving a larger share of the market space for electronic transactions.
We had actually been quiet clear with our own strategy as First
Bank in driving towards a cash-lite situation, because we have been trying to
move or migrate our customers to the electronic channels, so that they deal
less with cash. Now, having said that, it’s a good policy, it’s something
that’s going to help the economy because the velocity of transactions will be
much faster if you are using electronic means, and you can imagine that we have
move significantly forward from a situation whereby upcountry clearing was 21
days.
I don’t know if you still remember that there was a time in
Nigeria when it took 21 working days to clear a cheque if that cheque is not a
local cheque and local cheque itself took about a week for you to be able to
get your money to where we are today which is we have a turnaround time on
clearing items which is still T+2 and that has been shortened further to a next
day.
What do you mean by T+2?
T+2 means the day you
submit the cheque for clearing you add two days and on the third day you are
going to get credit in your account but that is being shortened further to a
next day clearing which by next month actually we should be having a taste that
fully. That is what has happened within the clearing system and we have seen
that, that has actually impacted the volumes of transactions that go by the way
of cheques rather than cash exchange.
Also, what has happened which we didn’t note is that it was like a
first phase of the movement towards less cash because if it takes 21 days for
you to get value for money, you would hardly do any transaction through that
channel. Now, what debit card have done, because debit card by their nature are
actually cheque replacements because cheques are instruments by which you
access your account; debit cards are also instruments by which you access your
account for payment.
With the introduction and wide-spread adoption of debit cards, we
actually have gotten a faster mode of rendering payment which doesn’t even have
to go through clearing, so you could say you have instant clearing with debit
cards. So, if I actually want to transfer money to you, if I have a portal that
allows me to debit my account using the security on my debit card and transfer
money to your own account, then I would basically be giving instantaneous
credit into your account, so that’s like instant settlement, what CBN has done
is to try to focus us on that platform, the cash-lite policy is essentially
trying to focus us on the efficiency of the platform that is built around the
card and the mobile payment which it has also introduced a license for, and
which are all instant settlement platform.
Essentially, what we do with exchange instrument is largely payment,
exchange of value so if we are able to do payment faster, transaction velocity
increases and therefore we can actually ensure that the economy becomes a lot
more productive. One of the reasons which CBN has also used as a justification
for the policy which is a valid reason, is the sheer cost or waste that is
going into handling cash because we all know how much it takes to print one
naira note and if you are frequently using it, you need to replace the note
more frequently, that’s a cost that goes into CBN’s account. Besides that the
bank that handle cash needs to employ people to do the cash counting and they
need to pay insurance to secure the cash that is held in their vault, we know
the risk of armed robbery in the country and some time the loss of lives that is
associated with the easy access to cash.
So, as a policy, we agree that’s the way it should go and what we
are doing at First Bank is that we are ensuring that as you adopt the
alternatives to cash, you basically do not get services that are less than what
you will get with the use of cash.
Our platforms are very reliable, we have moved from less than
2,000 active Point of Sale (PoS) terminals to over 8,000 that we have deployed
and we do intend that by the end of the year, First Bank alone will have
deployed more than 20,000 PoS is we are looking at focusing on Lagos area.
Across the country we will be talking of bigger numbers, but we are focusing on
Lagos because the focus this year even by the industry is really around Lagos,
so we are focusing on Lagos and we are saying that Lagos can really take that
depth of PoS deployment. There are a lot of places we go, all we do is go to
the nearby ATM, withdraw cash so that we can pay at the point of sale, why do
we need to go through that when you can swipe your card at the point of sale
and actually get value.
Why is it that some of the PoS are not working?
Those are the problems that we had initially, because the industry
had not focused on that. You know, there was also a time that an average bank’s
branch, the chances are that the network would be down was high, or if you go
to the bank’s ATM the chances that the ATM would not be online was high but
when we focused on that as an industry you see that those cases are very
remote; it’s not perfect right now but they are remote because most banks have
multiple links, most ATMs have multiple links and the same thing is happening
to the PoS right now where you have PoS that are deployed before having only a
single connectivity, today we are having PoS that have multiple connectivity,
multiple GPRS – Global Packet Radio Service, and all of that.
What causes some of the hiccups in transactions from time to time,
especially on the issue of ATM, from your professional perspective?
You talked about challenges, we cannot operate within a vacuum, we
know the state of infrastructure within the country, a lot of what we are doing
right now has to ride on the infrastructure that we have; communication links,
unreliable electricity.
If you actually want to run a branch that you would have an ATM
and that ATM needs to be available for 24-7, it means that even when the branch
has closed there must be power that is powering the ATM, we have gone ahead to
install inverters to protect those equipments and ensure that there is power
around the clock, so having put that background there, you would understand
that there is some point of failure that could actually arise, what tends to
happen is that we do have sometimes the communication links for instance in the
middle of an ATM transaction so a customer has slotted in the card and the pin,
and the transaction was about to take place and there is a failure of
communications.
What the ATM has been trained to do is that it would actually
reverse the transaction that has just failed because before parting with money,
the ATM will debit the account to be sure the money exist and then dispenses
money to you. However, let’s assume that the ATM had debited your account and
the link fails, the ATM will wait for an acknowledgement that the debit has
actually happen and then it doesn’t get, so it would return your card and also
automatically it would raise a credit back into your account. We all experience
it and I’m sure you have also experienced it.
If you are a First Bank customer and I hope you are, what happens
is if you slot in your card and have failed transactions you would get two
alerts almost at the same time, you will get the debit alert and you will get
the credit alert immediately, which shows that there is no human being manually
reversing the transactions because the system itself is automated to know that
something has failed and to credit you back with your money.
However, sometimes that automatic process doesn’t kick in and
that’s why we set up a dispute resolution mechanism which ensures that within
24 hours after such incidence of failure of the automatic reversal, someone in
the back office is able to credit you back, so there is not any instance that
we know, for instance, at First Bank and I believe across the industry really
that someone’s account has been debited and the money is not been credited back
except where people have been defrauded, because we are aware of cases of
people losing possession of their cards or compromising their PIN, and in such
cases there are also incomplete transactions on those account.
I am sure you know that bulk of electronic transactions rides on
networks, which in-turn depends on Internet Protocols (IPs) to deliver,
therefore what are banks doing on migration, especially are we looking forward
to having FBN as the first Nigerian bank to hook to IP version 6?
Let’s first define the IPv4 and v6, essentially the Internet
Protocol version 4, let’s keep it simple is just an addressing scheme, just
like you going into a street in Lagos and you will see old number 5, new number
16, IPv4 and IPv6 are numbering schemes. IPv6 was introduced because the
address space on IP version 4 was actually now more or less fully used because
of the rapid growth of the internet when countries like China started trooping
in and rapidly acquiring internet addresses.
Now, it doesn’t mean that all the addresses on IPv4 becomes
invalid, there is no organization that is getting shut down because they are on
IP version 4, and there is a transition plan that would actually allow people
to have both IPv4 and IPv6 work side by side. So for my internal network for
instance, I probably do not need to change the addressing scheme to IP version
6, because the number of devices and equipments that I have on my internal
network can still be managed with IPv4. And as it is today, even today on the
IP version 4 addresses are still able to communicate with any other hosts,
right, because there is that transition management process that has been set up
for a transition into IP version 6.
So, we do have a plan for a transition to IP version 6 but is
really not something that is going to give us any particular edge. It is not
something as you would say is quite strategic; it is not something that is
going to give us an edge. Everybody will ultimately transit to IPv6 if we
stretch into the very long future so but it’s not something we need to rush
into, we do have a plan to ensure that there is clearly no disruption to our
business due to the adoption of IPv6.
What would be your advice to Nigerians, especially First Bank
customers and what’s First Bank doing in providing facilities like loan for
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and encouraging those in the IT sector?
When we began, I told you that First Bank basically have the
broadest operation in Nigeria serving the very rich and large institutional
customers to the rural poor and how do we do that, we have our business
structured around segments, so the SMEs would fall under our retail segment and
we do have a group which happen to be the largest group accounting for about 50
per cent of our balance sheet which is actually the retail group, for them to
be 50 per cent of our balance sheet, means that we are actually lending to
them.
If you look at all the key sectors, First Bank is not just playing
there but we are also leading even in lending within those sectors. If you look
at agriculture, First Bank is one of the few banks that got the CBN
intervention fund and that’s because of the quality of lending that we are
doing within the agriculture sector and the fact that we have demonstrated to
CBN that we have the processes to actually understand and support that sector.
If you look at telecoms, when the telecoms industries took off
with advent of Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications, most people
didn’t believe in it; we were one of the first players in that space, not just
lending to the operators but also lending to their distributors and those in
the downstream of the telecoms operations.
Any
sector you look at, especially the SMEs that you are talking about, we are
basically very strong players there, as First Bank. But when you look at the
group it even get more interesting, because we do have First Funds, which also
provides what you could call seed capital type of investment. It’s more like I
won’t call it a straight venture capital vehicle but is close to it, we do take
equity investment in some of the SMEs that have proven that they have a viable
business plan that’s through First funds because you need to appraise those
funds differently from the way you appraise loans. Then, we have the
microfinance, the FBN Microfinance that also caters to the everyday rural
business person that needs N50,000 in order to be able to move tomatoes from
Mile 12 to Ajangbadi and have a viable business. So, we cater to the lowest of
the SMEs and also we cater to the large customers.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) may have raked in some $357.05 million, about N57.128 billion from the
first phase of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).
DigitalSENSE News investigations revealed that a total of
1,930 strings were applied for in the just concluded first phase of the
application progress for the new gTLDs as at June 13, 2012.
Also, it was discovered that each of these attracted the sum
of $185,000.00 about N29.6 million per string, hence, a total of N57.128
billion is approximately realised from the 1930 strings.
DigitalSENSE News further discovered that ICANN records
indicated that North America led the process with 911, followed by Europe with
675, Asia 303, Latin America and Caribbean got 24, and Africa got 17
applications only.
As a result, the North American applications boosted ICANN
treasury by $168.535million, about N26.965 billion; Europe, $124.875 million,
about N19.98billion; Asia $56.05 million, about N8.968 billion; Latin America
and Carribean’s quota was N710,400,000; and Africa, $3.145 million about N503.2
million, which brought the total down to $357.05 million, which is some N57.128
billion .
Further digging into ICANN’s account book by DigitalSENSE
News, shows that in the 2012 consolidated budget for this Financial Year, ICANN
has Registry fixed fees at $18,091,000, registry transaction fees at
$16,662,000, which brought the registry total fees to $34,753,000.
Although ICANN registrar application fees is expected to
revolve around $140,000, accreditation fees has been budgeted at $3,600,000,
while as the registrar variables fees was matched at $3,420,000; and registrar
transaction fees at $23,742,000, thus bringing the total to $30,902,000.
In addition, ICANN has budgeted the sum of $27,565,000 for
the new generic Top Level Domain application fees, regional Internet registry
(RIR), $823,000, country code Top Level Domain – $1,600,000, International
Domain Name (IDN) for the ccTLD, $780,000, while meeting sponsorships was
budgeted $900,000.
Meanwhile, ICANN presently is formally organized as a
non-profit corporation “for charitable and public purposes” under the
California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law. It is managed by a
16-member Board of Directors, which is composed of eight members selected by a
Nominating Committee on which all the constituencies of ICANN are represented;
six representatives of its
Supporting Organizations, sub-groups that deal with
specific sections of the policies under ICANN’s purview; an At-Large seat
filled by an At-Large Organization; and the President cum chief executive
officer (CEO), appointed by the Board.
DigitalSENSE News notes there are currently three Supporting
Organizations, namely the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) which
deals with policy making on generic top-level domains (gTLDs); the Country Code
Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) which deals with policy making on
country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs); and the Address Supporting
Organization (ASO) deals with policy making on Internet Protocol (IP)
addresses.
Further, ICANN relies on some advisory committees to receive
advice on the interests and needs of stakeholders that do not directly
participate in the supporting organizations, which include the Governmental
Advisory Committee (GAC), made up of representatives of a large number of
national governments from all over the world; the At-Large Advisory Committee
(ALAC), which is composed of representatives of organizations of individual
Internet users from around the world; the Root Server System Advisory
Committee, which provides advice on the operation of the Domain Name System
(DNS) root server system; the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC),
which is composed of Internet experts who study security issues pertaining to
ICANN’s mandate; and the Technical Liaison Group (TLG), which is composed of
representatives of other international technical organizations that focus, at
least in part, on the Internet.
The first phase of the new generic Top Level Domain (TLD)
applications were released on Wednesday, June 13, 2012. REMMY NWEKE examines
how the African continent fared in the process, so far.
Preamble:
A few days ago, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) concluded the first phase of the processes on the new
Generic Top Level Domain (gTLDs) with Africa scoring the least position with
only 17 strings out of the 1,930 total applications submitted.
ICANN records showed that North America led the process with
911, followed by Europe with 675, Asia 303, Latin America and Caribbean got 24,
Africa concluded the process with 17 applications, with each of the
applications attracting the sum of $185,000, about N29,600,000 million per
string, thus a total of $357,050,000 million, about N57,128,000,000 billion was
raked from the 1930 strings.
About Africa:
Historically, Africa is the world’s second-largest and
second-most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including
adjacent islands, thus covering 6 per cent of the earth’s total surface area
and 20.4 per cent of the total land area, according to Wikipedia.
Additionally, Africa has about 1.0 billion people as at
2009, which accounts for about 14.72 per cent of the world’s human population
and has 54 fully recognized sovereign states, 9 territories and three de facto
states with limited recognition.
Nigeria is one of the largest populations of all African
countries, at over 160 million. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the
largest country in total area in sub-Saharan Africa, and Algeria is the largest
as a whole.
Internet community reacts:
This development came as Internet experts have reacted to
the low performance of Africa, attributing it to low-level of sensitization and
interest.
One of those who spoke on this to DigitalSENSE News, the
vice president of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) and
chief executive officer, Skannet Nigeria Limited, Mr. Sunday Folayan, berated
the level of commitment Africa has shown on domain name business.
Folayan also says Africa’s involvement in the new gTLD
business has been very minute, just as there are very few African registrars
involved in the gTLD business.
“Most of the African ccTLDs are not populated unlike their
counterparts in the other parts of the world,” he said, stressing that Africa’s
response to the new gTLDs is reflective of the low level of interest and
participation in domain name business generally.
One string is $185,000:
Explaining further on the processes to DigitalSENSE News
exclusively, the Coordinator – Global Media Relations at Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Mr. James Cole, noted that the
evaluation fee for a new gTLD application currently is at $185,000 per
application. “So, if someone applied for .thing and .thething, those would be
considered two separate applications, each with a $185,000 fee,” he
enlightened.
Also, Mr. Cole told DigitalSENSE News that the total number
of applications was 1,930, entails that each application represents one string
that has been applied for.
However, he pointed out that some strings received multiple
applications, for instance, “You can see that strings such as “.store” and “.llc”
received multiple applications.”
New gTLD @ a glance
Additionally, the new gTLD’s introduction, ICANN staff
assured would not change how the Internet operates, explaining that the
increase in number of gTLDs into the root is not expected to affect the way the
Internet operates, but potentially change the way people find information on
the Internet or how businesses plan and structure their online presence.
ICANN pointed out that market speculations have varied
widely, but the process to evaluate applications has been built to economically
accommodate a wide range. Elucidating that applying for a new gTLD is not the
same as buying a domain name.
This, officials said emphatic ‘no’, adding that nowadays,
organizations and individuals around the world could register second-level and,
in some cases, third-level domain names, citing an instance with
maps.google.com, which in this case “google” is a second-level name and “maps”
is a third-level domain.
“They simply need to find an accredited registrar, comply with
the registrant terms and conditions and pay registration and renewal fees. The
application for a new gTLD is a much more complex process. An applicant for a
new gTLD is, in fact, applying to create and operate a registry business
supporting the Internet’s domain name system,” ICANN stated in the guidebook.
Further, this involves a number of significant
responsibilities, as the operator of a new gTLD is running a piece of visible
Internet infrastructure, but not with the payment of $185,000, about N30,155,000
million application fee, among others, which means that ICANN ranked in some
N58,199,150,000 billion from the 1930 (applications) strings.
ICANN says new gTLD increases competition:
ICANN says, it developed the new generic Top-Level Domain
Programme to increase competition and choice into the Internet’s addressing
system.
Officials of ICANN led by the immediate past-president Mr.
Rod Beckstrom had explained that a gTLD is an Internet domain name extension
such as the familiar .com, .net, or .org. Stressing that there are 280 country
code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), but only 22 “generics” in the domain name
system right now, but all that have taken a new turn with the unveiling of the
gTLD.
DigitalSENSE News recalls that the new gTLD application
window opened on January 12, 2012 and closed on May 30, 2012.
The new gTLD exercise marks a historic change in domain name
system, mainly because it allows, for the first time, non-Latin language
scripts, such as Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic to be used in a gTLD.
Also, DigitalSENSE News noted that the new programme was
approved by ICANN’s Board of Directors in June last year, 2011, at the 41st
public meeting in Singapore, following a six-year careful study, discussion and
debate.
The programme’s formation was framed by 45 comment periods
encompassing more than 2,400 comments and analyses, in addition to 55
explanatory memoranda or independent reports and seven (7) drafts of the gTLD
applicant guidebook.
Conclusion:
Whilst the African Internet community expresses dismay on
the number of take-up from the continent on the new gTLD, it would be expedient
for African Registrars and Registry, AfriNIC to wake up to its responsibilities
of engaging the continent with the world, when it comes to Internet
development, because its high-time to join the players rather than playing
catch-up.
Hi PCFix, I can’t
watch streaming videos from the internet on my computer. What should I do?
Jimoh Abiodun.
Ans: Hi Jimoh, You didn’t provide enough details about your
computer; the Operating System software, your internet browser software, and
your internet connection. However, the most common culprit for the inability to
watch videos on the internet is a plugin; this is a tiny piece of software that
is installed on your computer and works with the internet browser software on
your computer.
The most common plugins are Adobe Flash Player, Microsoft
Silverlight, Shockwave, WebpCodec and they enable your internet browser access
and display multimedia contents online appropriately.
Depending on the Operating System software that is installed
on your computer, you may have to update your current internet browser software.
However, we recommend the following because of their
versatility and wealth of plugins and extensions: Google Chrome, Mozilla
Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera. These are cross-platform software, meaning
they are compatible with various Operating System software, including but not
limited to Microsoft Windows, Apple MAC OS, and Linux Distributions.
It takes 45mins to
boot my PC
Hi PCFix, each time I
switch on my desktop computer, it takes about forty-five minutes before it
starts to boot up. Recently, it has not been booting up at all. What can I do
to make it function normally again. Akinsinde Afis.
Ans: Hi Afis, depending on the Operating System software
that is installed on your computer, you may be able to perform a system
restore; this will return your computer to an earlier date which it functioned
normally.
In order to access this feature, you should keep tapping the
F8 key on the keyboard as soon as you turn on your computer, this will halt the
boot process and take you to a diagnostic page, and you should select Safe
Mode. This will boot up your computer in a diagnostic mode and you can perform
the system restore.
Note, that the system restore function will delete all
programmes installed after the date you choose to restore to, but all your
documents are not affected in any way. If you have made changes to your
computer BIOS software, you may have to restore it to the default setting.
Occasionally, when changes are made to the boot order, the
computer will always look for boot up information from various sources before
finally checking the hard drive and this can slow down the boot up process
considerably.
My PC does not boot
to Windows
Hi PCFix, my computer
does not boot to Windows anymore, I noticed that it gives an error message
(hard disk failure, insert system disk) what could be wrong with it? Adelabu Ibrahim
Ans: Hi Ibrahim, that is one message every computer owner
should dread. It means your computer hard drive is faulty and needs replacement
before you can use your computer again. Sadly, all your data on the hard drive
is at risk of being totally lost.
If you have critical information on the hard drive, you can
take it to specialists who can perform recovery on it and get your information
out.
Note that all computer components have a lifespan and your
hard drive may have reached the end of its lifespan. Also, if you have dropped
the computer recently, the shock may have caused a physical damage in the hard
drive, hence, the error message you get on the screen. Before getting a
replacement, you should consult the manufacturer’s manual for your computer to
know the appropriate replacement part number and a host of other details.
Freezing computer
Hi PCFix, whenever I
turn on my computer, it only shows the first stage of booting up, and then it
freezes. What should I do to fix the problem? Ekezie Chinani
Ans: Hi Ekezie, the first thing you should do is to go into
the Safe Mode of your Operating System software; you can access it by
continuously tapping the F8 key as soon as you power on your computer. You will
see a diagnostics page with lots of options, select the option for Safe Mode
and press enter.
Your computer will most likely boot up in diagnostics mode,
and there you can perform a system restore to an earlier date. Good practice is
to choose a date before you noticed the error; this will delete the most recent
software you may have installed after the date chosen, but will not affect your
documents.
However, if your computer does not boot up into Safe Mode,
you may have to re-install the Operating System software on your computer. For
newer computers, they are shipped with a recovery partition instead of software
CDs or DVDs. You can access the recovery partition by pressing the F11 key (for
HP computers) when you power up your computer.
Caution! Make sure you have an external storage device on
hand to back up your data as the recovery process will restore your computer
back to its factory state and wipe your hard drive.
I changed my
operating system, my wireless disappears
Hi PCFix, I changed
the Operating System software on my HP Compaq Presario V6000 laptop from
Windows Vista to Windows 7, and then I discovered that the wireless function is
no longer responding. What is the best way to solve the problem? Oladitan Ahmed
Ans: Hi Ahmed, you have a case of missing driver software on
your laptop. The easiest way to solve this problem is to go to the support
section of your laptop manufacturer’s website and download the appropriate
driver for your new Operating System software.
Usually, not all the hardware drivers for a computer are
pre-bundled with the Operating System software. Some of the necessary drivers
for your computer are delivered via Windows update while others need to be
downloaded manually from the manufacturer’s website.
Some manufacturer’s bundle the necessary drivers in the C
drive on your computer and unless you format the hard drive, you can always
make use of them. Since you are upgraded from Windows Vista to Windows 7, some
drivers from the old Operating System Software may work with the new Operating
System. Please confirm with your product manual, downloadable from the
manufacturer’s website.
Akin Ibitoye
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