Broadband: HGI says welcome to Sky

 Leading global organisation representing service providers and manufacturers for the broadband home, under the aegis of HGI, has expressed delight over being joined by Sky.

ITRealms notes that HGI’s members enable advanced in-home services through the specification of service provider requirements and technical solutions for the Home Gateway and related infrastructure.

Sky is one of the biggest investors in content in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland and has committed to providing direct-to-home entertainment and broadband services, which aligns perfectly with HGI’s mission.

ITRealms recalls that Sky reaches more than forty per cent of homes in the UK with its range of services. It joins other industry leaders in the telecom sector already contributing to HGI, including founding members Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Orange France Telecom, Telecom Italia and TeliaSonera.

“Sky is committed to providing the best broadband experience to each and every one of our customers, and HGI’s work on hardware, software, and test requirements complements this goal,” says Daniel Fox, Research Manager at Sky, stressing that  by becoming a member of HGI allows the company to both benefit from and contribute to the standards-setting that is underway.

For the Chief Technology Officer of HGI, Duncan Bees, the group is delighted to welcome Sky, a leading innovator in delivering satellite and broadband services.

“We look forward to Sky’s contributions to HGI’s specifications in a variety of important and timely areas such as smart home services and media gateway requirements,” Bees said.

This news follows the recent announcement by HGI that it has published an updated specification for improving Quality of Service (QoS) with the Home Gateway.

HGI will soon be hosting an open forum to present the latest smart-home developments and demonstrating the real-world practical applications of the significant work in this field at Telecom Italia Labs Auditorium in Torino, Italy on Tuesday, March 19. 

Remmy Nweke 
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Marvel Umoh’s Could’ve Been Me in close chase with ‘Superman’

Breaking News:

Just few hours to the closure of the online gospel music contest, the Marvel Umoh’s Could’ve Been Me is chasing ‘Superman’ by Steve Rawd in the February Song of the Month 2013 at the Gospel Naija contest for the month.

ITRealms investigations showed that as at the time of filing this report showed that 239 votes have been casted for the online contest which voting commenced 9am on Monday 25th of February.

It was also gathered that the voting is also expected to close 9pm on Saturday 2nd of March 2013.

The organizers said interested voters can cast their votes every hour that is, once an hour, for the song of their choice, which they think should be song of the month.

“The winning song will be announced at the end of the voting period,” the organizers disclosed.

 
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How search engine companies ‘manipulate votes’ – US

The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT) has revealed in a study how search engine companies could indeed manipulate votes during electoral or democratic processes.


In the top 10 search engines globally Google leads with 82.80 per cent, followed by Yahoo with 6.42 per cent, Baidu 4.89 per cent, Bing 3.91 per cent, Yandex 1.7 per cent, Ask 0.52 per cent and AOL 0.3 per cent as at May 2011.

ITRealms recalls that experts at Wikipedia described a web search engine as a software code that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web (www).

Notable is that the search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERP's). Hence, the information may be a specialist in web pages, images, information and other types of files. While some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories.

They also explained that unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler.

However, the AIBRT claim is given weight with the growing number of search engines and Internet adaption globally, which currently stood at about 2,405,518,376 internet users on June 30, 2012 with Africa recording 167,385,751 Internet users as at December 31, 2012.

ITRealms gathered that the researchers led by Dr. Epstein Robertson noted that even more worrisome is the fact that these search engine companies lead by Google as most outstanding could probably be pushed to almost 100 per cent of votes in any electoral process with adequate resources available to the company.

According to him, about 75 per cent of participants in democratic process were unaware that any manipulation could take place in the first instance.

He pointed out that in a second experiment, his team discovered that the manipulation could be masked, boosting the number of people who were oblivious to the manipulation to over 85 per cent, a figure that Dr. Epstein says, could be advanced to the highest figure.

“These results are really shocking,” Dr. Epstein said, adding that his team knew that voters are exposed to a large variety of influences during political campaigns: television advertisements, rallies, debates, and newspaper support.

However, search ranking manipulation could exert a disproportionately large influence over voters for a number of reasons.

“Most sources of influence are explicit and obvious in their support of one candidate or party, for example a newspaper article might be clearly one sided, making it easier to see the manipulation. Ranking changes are, in theory, undetectable and those searching don’t know that they are only being presented with one side of the story.

“People approach Google from the perspective that what it tells you is unbiased or neutral.  But as a business, that company or any company, will certainly favor some candidates over others – candidates that are good for the business.”

The study was conducted under the auspices of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in Vista, California (USA), a non-profit, non-partisan research organization.

Remmy Nweke 

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BON advocates special fund for digital migration in Nigeria by 2015

The Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) has advocated for a special fund to fast track Nigeria’s digital migration by January 1, 2015, according to a report monitored on Africa Independent Television (AIT) Tuesday, in Lagos.

BON is the umbrella body of the corporate broadcasting entities in Nigeria, but unfortunately, the issue of digital migration was not key to the body as at the end of 2011, since it has to face an election year.

Sources close to BON confirmed to ITRealms that the special fund when created and made available to stakeholders, especially members of BON, it will go a long way in alleviating the challenges of funding digital migration by private sector organisations.

But following the clamour by stakeholders for Nigeria to take visible action to ensure that over 200 broadcast outlets that form its membership, and call for release of the white paper on the Presidential committee on Digital Migration in Nigeria, Nigeria last year set up what was tagged 14-man DigiTeam led by Engr. Edward Amana as the chairman.

Other members of Digiteam include Barr. Efere Ozoko, Mr. Bruce Ayanote, Capt.Talba Alkali, Engr. F.Y.N.Daudu, ACG Umar Iya Abubakar, Mr. Godwin Iheabunike, Engr. Dr. Bashir Gwandu, Mr. Guy Murray Bruce, Mr.Maxwell P.Loko, Engr.Friday Ekwela, Mrs. Veronica Adeyemo, and Dr.(Mrs) M.A. Abu.

 

ITRealms recalls that in order to catch-up with the deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for digital migration, that is, 2015, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, on Thursday, December 20, 2012, inaugurated the Digiteam; a digital committee charged with driving the process of transition from analogue to digital terrestrial television transmission in Nigeria.

The SGF had told the committee that its task was a unique and an important national assignment upon which Government placed a very high premium.

Stressing that modernisation of infrastructure and services is an integral part of President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s priorities, hence he emphasized that the process for selecting the members of the DigiTeam took cognizance of their individual capacities and contributions to the industry.

“This is a date we cannot afford to make any adjustment towards rescheduling. It is expected that you complete your assignment much earlier than January 2015 because we must catch up with the international requirement.

In his response, the Committee chairman, Engr. Edward Amana, expressed thanks to the Federal Government for the inauguration, noting that it was an enormous responsibility that was being placed on them.

He promised that the work of the Committee on completion would change the face of broadcasting in Nigeria and usher in a new era of better quality broadcasting, nationwide.

“The resultant save in spectrum would also generate a lot of funds for government,” Amana said.

He, however, admitted that it was not an easy task as the committee was starting work two years behind schedule and has two years to deliver; Thus, requested support from all stakeholders and promised to deliver on this special national assignment on schedule.

Engr. Edward Amana commended the NBC for piloting the ship for transition from analogue to Digital broadcasting. 

While the inauguration was attended by Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson; Permanent 

Secretary in the Office of the SGF; the Director General, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Engr.Yomi Bolarinwa; Members of Management of the Commission; and Senior Officers in the Office of the SGF.

The question waiting for an answer by industry watchers is that given the bureaucracy evident, it may not likely meet with the January 1, 2015, deadline.

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