Etisalat To Ride On Intelsat 22 For Business Expansion

By ROMMY IMAH (With Agency Reports)

Intelsat S.A., the world's leading provider of satellite services, announced today that Etisalat UAE, a leading telecommunications services provider in the Middle East, has signed a multi-year agreement for capacity on Intelsat 22, scheduled to launch in late March 2012.

The report said that as part of the multi-transponder agreement, Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat will utilize the satellite's capacity to expand the reach of its broadband and GSM backhaul services to its customers in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and central Asia.

Ali Amiri, executive vice president of carrier and wholesale services for Etisalat said, “As the leading provider of connectivity in the Middle East, Etisalat will now be able to expand the reach of its broadband and GSM backhaul services to new regions across the globe. This important agreement will provide Etisalat with the capability to meet the growing communications requirements of our customers."

Jean Philippe Gillet, Intelsat’s regional vice president of sales for Europe and the Middle East said, “We continue to work closely with premier telecommunications providers like Etisalat to help them expand their global footprint. Intelsat 22 is the first of five satellites expected to launch in 2012 that will provide additional capacity over key regions like the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”

The satellite is expected to carry two Ku-band mobility beams providing coverage of the Indian Ocean region, which will blanket vital maritime and aeronautical routes. In addition, Intelsat 22 will have Ku-band capacity serving the Middle East and eastern Africa. Its C-band hemi beams coverage provides connectivity to and from most of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and eastern Asia.

Intelsat 22 will replace Intelsat 709, and will serve the Indian Ocean region from 72ºE. 

With SAATECH Auto Tracking Solution, Your Third Party Insurance Is Guaranteed

Security & Allied Technologies Limited (SAATECH), a Lagos-based eSecurity services provider running on the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies has been in the business of car tracking in the last six years with an intimidating recovery success record. The company’s managing director and chief executive officer, Mr. Ndubueze Onyeka recently spoke to ROMMY IMAH on how it has been working with Insurance firms to provide Nigerian car owners security for their cars.......

Could you please introduce us to what Security and Allied Technologies Limited (SAATECH) is doing?

Security and Allied Technologies Limited, SAATECH is primarily into eSecurity with bias for vehicle tracking, CCTV, Access Control, Burglar Alarm and Biometrics. The company started in 2005 with CCTV and had pioneer clients as Julius Berger and First Bank in security service provision. In 2006, the company moved into vehicle tracking, security and fleet management. We were then servicing Julius Berger where we did a number of vehicles, trucks and vessels. From there, we moved to First Bank where we were involved in the tracking of their corporate pools. By the end of 2006 we began to get patronage from Insurance companies when we developed the product offering of vehicle tracking and tailored it to the needs of Insurance companies to support their comprehensive motor products.

As an emerging market, we were able to redesign tracking product offering. Presently, we have one of the largest clientele in vehicle tracking with respect to the Insurance sub-sector. There is virtually no Insurance company in Nigeria today that does not patronize SAATECH. We have the likes of IGI, IEI, AIICO, Insurance PHB, Starco, Leadway, GNI and a whole lot of other insurance companies. We are doing well.

What is SAATECH’s unique selling point, that which distinguishes you from your competitors?

What distinguishes us primarily is the wholesale technology we bring to the Nigerian market. What I mean by this is that I don’t know of any other tracking company in the country whose server is domiciled here in Nigeria other than SAATECH. Besides, we have about four enterprise server solutions for vehicle tracking, and this has given us a lot of edge such that we can respond to any challenge at any time. Vehicle tracking is a timely service for example if a customer’s vehicle is stolen say 11.00pm or 12.00am; he (the customer) expects prompt response. And because we have a server here managed 24/7, we are able to respond to such challenge promptly. This is a different story when the server is domiciled in U.K, USA or Germany; check out what problem distance would have caused. Our greatest unique selling point is that we are here in Nigeria, and our server is domiciled here in Nigeria. We have designed this business to meet the needs of Nigerians; we understand the environmental factor in Nigeria. Security service provision and vehicle tracking in particular is something you have to look into the environment before you start offering the service. We tailor our service to solving the needs of our clients.

We are very sensible with our pricing; we negotiate any size of job. No job is small, from one vehicle to a pool of vehicles; we have the appropriate and customer-friendly pricing that our customers appreciate. And we are ever ready to negotiate prices as this has been giving us the edge above competition.

Ever since you commenced business in 2006, have you had the challenge of customers coming back with reports of missing vehicles? If so, were you able to recover such vehicles?

Vehicle tracking is all about vehicle recovery, and like I said earlier, we have through our services been giving support to Insurance companies. We are having a boom as a result of this. We have one of the largest numbers of Insurance companies as our clientele pooled together on our network. It is a function of the recoverability of their vehicles and even timely.

Yes, we have been recovering vehicles even cross border recovery as far as Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and some neighbouring countries with the help of Interpol; the

Imagine Cup 2012: Microsoft Calls For Registration

*Team Nerds Inc, 2011 National winners

*L-R: Duke Obasi of AlliedSoft, Sherrif Shittu of Web Trends 
(both judges)& Emmanuel Onyeje, GM, Microsoft 

Anglophone West Africa at the Nigeria Finals last year

As the deadline for this year’s annual Imagine Cup student technology competition approaches, Microsoft Nigeria is calling on Nigerian students to participate and come up with imaginative solutions to use technology to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.

The competition, now in its tenth year, has grown to become the world’s premier student technology competition with more than 358,000 students representing 183 countries participating in last year’s event.

For this year’s edition therefore, students have until 13 March 2012, 23:59:59 GMT to register for the competition in one of eight categories: Software Design; Game Design (Xbox/Phone); Game Design (Phone); IT Challenge; Kinect Fun Labs Challenge; Windows Metro Style App Challenge; Windows Azure Challenge; and Windows Phone Challenge. 

Besides the vast opportunities presented from competing on the world stage at the premier student technology competition, participants stand to win cash prizes and grants. Each Worldwide Finalist and one Mentor per team will be awarded a trip to Sydney, Australia to compete in the Worldwide Finals in July 2012.

The trip includes round trip coach airfare from the major

Cisco Forecasts Highest Mobile Data Traffic Growth

*John T. Chambers, Cisco CEO

…..In Middle East & Africa

Worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month or an annual run rate of 130 exabytes by 2016. Middle East and Africa will have the highest regional mobile data traffic growth rate with a CAGR of 104 percent, or 36-fold growth. 

This is according to a Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016 just released.

The release showed that the expected sharp increase in mobile traffic is due, in part, to a projected surge in the number of mobile Internet-connected devices, which will exceed the number of people on earth  going by the 2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion. Cisco anticipates that during 2011-2016, global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times.

The forecast predicts an annual run rate of 130 exabytes of mobile data traffic, equivalent to: 33 billion DVDs; 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio); and 813 quadrillion short message service (SMS) text messages.

An exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to 1quintillion bytes.

This mobile data traffic increase represents a compound

MTN Deploys Largest Data Networks For Shell

*Brett Goschen, MTN Nigeria CEO

MTN Nigeria has deployed two independent 622MB data networks for Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), the largest capacity ever deployed for any corporate organization in Nigeria.

The two independent links provide high bandwidth data connectivity between Shell’s operations in Lagos and Port Harcourt; and Port Harcourt and Warri. Both links ride on MTN’s nationwide fibre optic network providing both primary connectivity and redundancy to support voice, data and video traffic from Shell’s advanced enterprise applications.

MTN’s Chief Enterprise Solutions Officer, Babatunde Osho, said reliable IP connectivity is the platform upon which large organisations can deploy collaborative solutions that make them more productive and efficient.

“These recent deployments in the Oil and Gas space confirm that organisations in Nigeria are gearing up for getting the most of what the latest technology has to offer. With reliable IP connectivity, large multi-location organisations can collaborate better, greatly increasing the productivity of their workforce. With the largest fibre network in Nigeria and our capabilities in communication, collaboration and optimisation, MTN is uniquely positioned to be the single, trusted technology partner for leading businesses in Nigeria,” he said.

It could be recalled that MTN also recently deployed two DS3 (45MB) data links to two other Oil and Gas majors which involved the implementation of transmission through the creeks of the Niger Delta.

Airtel, Etisalat Partner FirstBank On Mobile Money Service

*Rajan Swaroop, CEO, Airtel Nigeria (left) & Bisi Onasanya,

GMD/CEO of First Bank Plc at the MoU signing event

*CEO, Etisalat Nigeria, Steven Evans (left) and the GMD/CEO, 

First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Mr Bisi Onasanya at the MoU signing ceremony 

As Nigeria joins the league of Nations providing mobile money service, two leading telecommunications services providers, Airtel Nigeria and Etisalat Nigeria have separately entered into agreement with one of the country’s financial giants, FirstBank Plc aimed at providing seamless mobile money services to millions of Nigerians.

At the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Airtel Nigeria and FirstBank Plc in Lagos recently, the two companies promised to combine their strengths to provide secure, convenient and user-friendly mobile banking services to unbanked people of the country via mobile phones.

Elsewhere, at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between another telecom services provider, Etisalat Nigeria and FirstBank Plc, the two companies assured that the event does not only mark the commencement of a major shift in the landscape of e-banking services in Nigeria but also a combination of the strengths of the two leading organizations to provide secure, convenient and user-friendly

Aftermath of Lagos Storm: MTN reassures public on masts

*Brett Goschen, MTN Nigeria CEO

Following last Monday’s unprecedented gale-force winds which wreaked havoc in many parts of Lagos and reportedly felled down some telecommunication masts, MTN Nigeria, has reassured its numerous customers that none of its masts was brought down by the high speed wind.

MTN’s Corporate Services Executive, Akinwale Goodluck said: “Though yesterday’s winds were unprecedented, thankfully no MTN-owned mast went down as our masts have been sturdily built to withstand strong winds and other extreme natural elements.”

Goodluck further assured that for service quality and safety reasons, MTN would continue to monitor masts and other equipment at its base transceiver stations across the country. This is in line with MTN’s commitment to the highest standards of quality and safety of equipment.

Airtel Courts SMEs With Club Business

Emeka Oparah, Director, Public Relations & CSR; Rajiv Seghal, VP, Enterprise, SME & Postpaid; and Inusa Bello, Chief Sales Officer, all of Airtel Nigeria at the launch in Lagos.....

Airtel Nigeria has introduced Club Business, a specific package aimed at boosting business productivity and profitability. This is in its effort to empower Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with relevant and affordable telecommunications solutions. 

The Club Business offering according to the telco, will enable owners of Small and Medium Businesses to form a club of 20 members with their employees and as a result, benefit from specialized discounts including free calls for the first 100 minutes and subsequent charge of 20k/sec for Airtel to Airtel calls, while SMS to club members will be at N1. 

Deepak Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Airtel Nigeria, said at the media launch of the new package that Airtel Club Business is specially designed to address the prevailing business environment in Nigeria, providing excellent opportunities for small business owners to adopt creative and strategic initiatives to survive the harsh business climate. 

“The company considers the SME sector as vital to the growth of the nation’s economy and as a result, it is committed to creating products and services that will boost profitability and productivity in the sector, ensuring return on investments and economic growth”, Srivastava said.  

Airtel Club Business allows a minimum of five users and a maximum of twenty Airtel customers. In addition to the free calls for first 100 minutes and N1 per SMS for Club members, calls to Airtel numbers are

Dataflex Re-Strategizes, Names New Management Team

*Okpala

*Danjuma

Having provided well tested Datacenter solutions around power and cooling,  Dataflex has in line with deepening its offering in the Information technology space re-strategized through the expansion of its solutions offering in the market. Dataflex is currently regarded as one of the top five leading ICT companies in Nigeria, providing Power, Cooling and Hardware solutions to its growing list of customers.

One of Dataflex’s key areas of concentration going into the future is in providing cloud services to customers.

The company’s Managing Director, Mr. Andy Nwani, who spoke at the company’s Management Retreat recently said, “the reality that computation will gradually gravitate into the cloud explains some of the recent technologies that we see in today’s business environment. We at Dataflex believe that it is the key to future development and would provoke a certain level of Cultural change.”

Dataflex he said is currently investing in people and technologies to ensure that it can participate actively in the change gradually coming into this part of the world adding that as solutions providers, the company will always seek to provide services to customers that would help them effectively optimize their costs and increase profitability.

Meanwhile, as part of Dataflex’s re-engineering processes and investment in people, the company has recently strengthened