Unwin predicts Internet access to top agenda for 2015 SDGs

DigitalSENSE Business News:

The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), Professor Tim Unwin, has predicted that access to the Internet will top agenda for the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reports DigitalSENSE Business News.

Professor Unwin, DigitalSENSE Business News gathered, made his prediction at the just ended inaugural Commonwealth Broadband Forum 2014 held between 18 and 20 November in Nairobi, Kenya.

He told DigitalSENSE Business News the importance of broadband and stressed how all should work collectively to ensure that the poorest and most-marginalised groups are not excluded, but able to grasp the opportunities provided by new technologies.

“Broadband connectivity should not only be used for economic growth but should also be used as a driver for social justice and effective governance,” Prof. Unwin declared to DigitalSENSE Business News in a press statement made available to correspondent by Marcel Belingue.

DigitalSENSE Business News recalls that over 130 delegates from Commonwealth countries took part in the event, hosted by the Communications Authority of Kenya.

 
Over three days, DigitalSENSE Business News also gathered, participants examined several aspects of broadband, including the future of broadband and mobile technologies across the Commonwealth and beyond, and the impact that these technologies will have in driving innovation and growth.

Some of the session-focused discussions, DigitalSENSE Business News gathred from 2014 theme "Broadband for Accelerated Growth” comprised the Mobile broadband technologies: 4G and LTE; Broadband access and infrastructure aiding development; Cloud computing for emerging markets; Broadband applications and value-added services; Inclusion and innovation beyond broadband: The rise of tech cities, Financing broadband in Africa; and Strengthening broadband public-private partnerships to accelerate investment projects.

@Chuks Egbuna +Remmy Nweke +Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation

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President Jonathan to meet Nigeria’s high-level investment council in London

DigitalSENSE Business News:

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will travel to London this evening to preside over a meeting of Nigeria’s Honorary International Investment Council (HIIC) which opens in the British capital on Friday, November 21, 2014, reports DigitalSENSE Business News. 

The HIIC, DigitalSENSE Business News gathered was established in 2004 to advice the Federal Government on matters pertaining to Nigeria’s economic development, making the Nigerian economy more competitive globally and attracting greater direct foreign investment to boost domestic industrial growth and job creation.

DigitalSENSE Business News also gathered that discussions at the HIIC meeting in London will focus on the current investment landscape in Nigeria, developments and opportunities in the ongoing upgrade and expansion of Nigeria’s public infrastructure, as well as opportunities and reforms in Nigeria’s rail transportation, power and construction sectors. 

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati disclosed to DigitalSENSE Business News in a press statement dated November 19 in Abuja that President Jonathan would be accompanied to the meeting by key ministers including the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, the Minister of Defence, Gen Aliyu Gusau (rtd.) and the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar. 

DigitalSENSE Business News further learnt that they would be joined by the Coordinator of the HIIC, Baroness Lynda Chalker and other key members of the Council including Haruki Hayashi of the Mitsubishi Corporation, Yves Louis Darricarrere of Total, Andy Brown of Shell, Guillame Roux of Larfarge, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Mr. Jim Ovia, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, some state governors and Chairmen of the National Assembly Committees on Transport to name a few.

President Jonathan, DigitalSENSE Business News gathered is expected back to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja on Sunday, November 23, 2014.

 +Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) @PresidentGEJ @HIIC

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Pix: President Jonathan.

Jack explains NITDA advisory board on local content

ITRealms:

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Dr. Peter Jack has explained the reasons behind the recent inauguration of an advisory board and a National Coordinating Office for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Local Content (NCOILC), reports ITRealms.

Speaking to ITRealms during the commencement of the 2014 eNigeria Summit in Abuja, he said that the setting up of the advisory and eventual NCOILC was part of the implementation plan emanating from the eNigeria 2013 Communique.

According to him, in 2013 it was recommended that a special purpose institutional structure be developed based on guidelines, hence the advisory board which was inaugurated on June 30, 2014.

He also told ITRealms that a National Coordinating Office for ICT Local Content has been established under the supervision of NITDA.

“The board of the office has membership from ICT trade associations, regulatory bodies in critical sectors of the economy and multinational companies among others,” he said.

Mr. Jack equally told ITRealms that the coordinating office for Nigerian Content Development in ICT has already established a collaborative relationship with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Oil and Gas in order to benefit from their experience.

As said by him, it was in view of the foregoing that the focus of eNigeria 2014 was on Technology start-ups and young innovators.

He stressed that this consideration is timely particularly at this time that World Bank and United Kingdom Department of International Development (DFID) are supporting Nigeria to create jobs.

He pointed out that Nigeria targets some 460,000 jobs to be created across eight critical sectors in the nation’s economy with ICT as top most priority.

ITRealms recalls that this year’s eNigeria theme is “Creating Market Opportunities for Indigenous ICT Products and Services.”

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +Peter Jack +NITDA NIGERIA @eNigeria2014

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Pix: Peter Jack, DG, NITDA speaking at eNigeria 2014.

Nokia Lumia 530: Advancing smartness for middle class

Mobile Device Review @ITRealms:

In the month of July 2014 a new product obviously in affirmation of the new bound between Nokia and Microsoft which gave birth to Microsoft Device; the Nokia Lumia 530 Dual SIM also know as RM-1019 made its debut globally but was made available since August 2014.

Generally speaking, NokiaLumia 530 Dual SIM works on second generation network (2G network), Global System for mobile communication (GSM) in about four bands namely on GSM 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 on both Subscriber Identification Module (SIM 1 and SIM 2).

While on the third generation network with High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which is an enhanced 3G (third-generation) mobile-telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+, or Turbo 3G, thus allowing networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data speeds and capacity.
ITRealms recalls since 2013 HSDPA deployments could support down-link speeds of up to 99.3 Mbit/s.

And with its 3G on HSDPA 900/21000 Lumia 530 supports Micro-SIM on dual stand-by. The body mass of Nokia Lumia 530 comes in the dimension of 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7 mm, 86.8 cc that is 4.71 x 2.45 x 0.46 inches, while the weight is 129 g (4.55 oz).

Also, Nokia Lumia 530 comes with the Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display otherwise described as capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors. With 480 x 854 pixels, size, 4.0 inches (~245 ppi pixel density) of course with  multi-touch, it's sound alert includes vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones and loudspeaker could be attached, even as the memory card slot accommodates microSD which has up to 128 GB with Internal 4 GB, and 512 MB Random Access Memory (RAM).

As for data, Nokia Lumia 530 is equipped with General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) as well as Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE) which is a faster version of GSM wireless service with up to 236.8 kbps, HSPA 21.1/5.76 Mbps, whereas the Wireless Local-Area Network (WLAN) runs on Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot with Bluetooth v4.0, A2DP and Universal Serial Bus (USB) microUSB v2.0 for connection with USB-related cable and tools.

The Nokia Lumia 530 has a primary camera of 5 Mega Pixel (MP) which is equivalent of 2592 x 1936 pixels, featuring 1/4'' sensor size, video worth 480p@30fps without any secondary camera.
Additional features of Nokia Lumia include its Operating System (OS) latest model of Microsoft Windows Phone which is the 8.1 plus the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset, even as the CPU Quad-core 1.2 GHz comes along GPU Adreno 302 and sensors known as accelerometer.

On the messaging tools, Nokia Lumia 530 has what could be described as thread view when it comes to Short Messaging Service (SMS), doubled with Multi-Media Service (MMS), electronic mail (Email) with the ability to push emails and Instant Messaging (IM) which rides on Hypertext Marked Language version (HTML5) accompanied with Frequency Modulated (FM) radio. Addition to Global Positioning System, although Java lovers may have to look else where.

As for the colors, Nokia Lumia 53 exhibits bright orange, green, white, and dark grey.
For music lovers, Lumia 530 has an active noise cancellation with dedicated mic adoptive in MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA players and MP4/H.264/WMV players, while offering 15 GB free OneDrive storage and document viewer, vide/photo editor, voice memo/dial/commands as well as predictive text input.

As for the battery, Nokia Lumia 530 is dispatched into the market with Li-Ion 1430 mAh battery (BL-5J) whereas it's stand-by is up to 528 hour; talk time of up to 13 hours 20 minutes (2G) / Up to 10 hours, that is if the user is on (3G) and playing music for up to 51 hours.

In addition, some users alleged that Nokia Lumia 530 may not be able to connect directly to Wi-Fi due to what is tagged installing error. Rather this could be overcome by usage of mobile of course. But above all Nokia Lumia 530 seems to be advancing smartness among middle class.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +Nokia @Lumi530

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DigitalSENSE Africa join’s ICANN At Large Structure

ITRealms:

Multiple award-winning media group, the DigitalSENSE Africa Media has been accredited as a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as an At-Large Structure (ALS), reports ITRealms.

DigitalSENSE Africa Media is the organisers of the annual Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum Series including the Internet Governance Forum for Development (IG4D) and Nigeria Internet Protocol version Six (IPv6) Roundtable since 2009, as well as the publishers of DigitalSENSE Business News, NaijaAgroNet and ITRealms.

It could be recalled that  in 2011, DigitalSENSE Africa Media midwifed the first-ever Nigeria hosted West Africa Internet Governance Forum (WAIGF) in collaboration with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) even as DigitalSENSE Africa is a corporate member of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) and member, Local Multistakeholder Advisory Group of Nigeria Internet Governance Forum (LMAG-NIGF).

This is coming as leadership of DigitalSENSE Africa promises to continue its strides by ensuring all-inclusive enlightenment of Nigerian internet users.

A letter mail (email) entitled “Welcome to At-Large!” endorsed on behalf of the At-Large Advisory Committee by ICANN Policy Staff-led by Heidi Ullrich and including Silvia Vivanco, Ariel Liang, Gisella Gruber, Nathalie Peregrine and Terri Agnew, dated Friday, November 14, 2014 conveyed the accreditation to DigitalSENSE Africa.

According to the letter sighted by ITRealms, ALAC stated its pleasure to inform that DigitalSENSE Africa with registration number 211, has been certified as an At-Large Structure (ALS).

ITRealms gathered that the ALAC greatly appreciates “your group's interest in involving individual users in ICANN and looks forward to working with you and your colleagues.”

Also ITRealms gathered that the purpose of ALS certification is to recognize that DigitalSENSE Africa meets the necessary criteria to involve individual Internet users at the local or issue level in ICANN activities, and will support its individual members' informed participation in ICANN efforts that affect end-users.

“The ALAC is eager to promote a productive working relationship between your organization, other ALS, and the ALAC (and ICANN in general), and your input on how we can make this a success would be greatly appreciated,” part of the letter read.
 

Reacting, on behalf of the management of DigitalSENSE Africa (DSA) Media, the Executive Director, Operations, Nkemdilim Nweke (Mrs) expressed gratitude for the certification by members of ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) as an At-Large Structure (ALS).

“We appreciate the trust repose in DigitalSENSE Africa by ALAC members, especially those who trusted and stood by DigitalSENSE Africa by supporting our application,” she said.

She also promised that DigitalSENSE Africa would continue to do its best in enlightening individual users and actively participate in ICANN-related processes both locally, regionally and internationally.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +ICANN @ICANN-ALAC @DigitalSENSEng @NaijagAgroNet

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