Internet penetration and Reading culture in Developing countries

It has always been stated that the best way to hide information from an African is by writing it. Africans are well known for the poorest reading habits. Every motivational talk I have attended, has had to mention reading as the best way to redeem Africa. Reading, on a number of cases has been sought after as the best way to run away from the cyclic cycle of poverty affecting the developing countries. Finding the number of people in Africa who can read a book and complete it is a tricky task. Many people have always blamed this problem (poor reading) to limited availability of reading materials. Most of the materials are for sale, at prices most people would not want to reserve for reading purposes.

With the invent of web 2.0, more information has been readily availed for almost all people who can access even the slowest Internet. The past five years have seen most of the African countries more than double their Internet Penetration numbers¹. Internet has become cheaper, and more available on the move.

There are no concrete numbers on our reading habits and the increasing availability of Internet but many people are arguing that it is not the absence of what to read that created this bad reading habit, but the culture. A lot of information is available in the print media, either free of charge to access but not all is read.

Recently, on one of the discussion forums², (I-network) we discussed how government was looking at facilitating Members of Parliament (MPs) with laptops, smart phones (actually Ipads) to have more access to discussion documents while in house or any where because some MPs complained that the printed reports are just bulky. It however was deduced that this will not change the reading habits of the house. MPs will continue coming to the floor with out information about the discussion topic.

With the advent of web 2.0 Internet, Internet use and reading has increased but what is discussed is fun, jokes, obnoxious news and some few quotes. Social networks are now responsible for over 28% of Internet Penetration in Africa³. It is very hard to find some one reading and linking other friends to some piece of good reading material if it is developmental. If some one does share material, very few people will follow it, but let it be a joke, nude pictures, music and name it in that line, the followers will be in millions.

Can some one comfortably state that developing countries where cursed when it comes to reading and nothing will ever change the trends? Do you think the higher Internet penetration will ultimately change the course with time? How can we use this almost free resource (Internet) to advance our reading culture as we know reading is knowledge and knowledge is wealth; a better way to move away from the enslavement of poverty.

REF:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/KeyTelecom.html

http://www.slideshare.net/kemibaro/synovates-kenya-internet-usage-insights-q2-2010

http://www.africa-uganda-business-travel-guide.com/east-africa-internet-usage-slightly-over-25m.html

 

1http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/19/world-internet-population-has-doubled-in-the-last-5-years/

2http://next.dgroups.org/iicd/i-network/

3http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm

Internet bundling and it's effects to Internet penetration in developing countries

Internet bundling and it's effects to Internet penetration in developing countries

East Africa being a community of developing countries, has been blessed with the appearance of three submarine cables^* at the East African coast. Coming from satellite Internet which is known to have a minimum round trip time of 500ms to optic fibre Internet which reduces the round trip time to even less than 10ms, every thing in Internet speeds and Internet bandwidth has increased at the coast and in the inlands of the East African community. More Internet can be accessed on the move (mobile Internet), more people are becoming abreast with the Internet and the different terminologies, more Internet service providers, more content is being developed and more innovations are coming up in the world of Internet. If all that is not enough, many countries have developed Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) which help in reducing the time to access local content and also develop the capacity of local content creation. The case here in Uganda is the Uganda Internet Exchange Point (UIXP). When Uganda only had satellite ISPs (Internet Service Providers), Internet was expensive, slow, and limited the access to some websites like torrent sites. Although with the increasing number of ISPs, most of these limitations have been done with, but a new innovation has been noticed. Those days, Internet was sold in the whole, meaning you paid for a service and it did not matter how you used the service. These days, even after paying for the service, there is a limit to how much of the data you can download and upload in a particular period of time. This phenomenal is referred to as data capping or data bundling in Internet terminologies.

How has Internet Bundling affected Internet usage?

With the advent of social networks and the entire web 2.0, a lot of content is available, more people are living life on the Internet and more people are joining the Internet. As more demand for the Internet grows, the supply seems to be constrained which leaves people demanding for more. Those who cannot afford the bundles are left to access Internet in corporate offices, Internet cafes and friends computers where possible. This leaves this type of population with out service. Some people still believe that once they have paid some money to the ISPs, they should be let to use the Internet freely with out boundaries. They further assert that, it is because of these boundaries that innovations and some initiatives are limited as some content will require more bundles than other content, which brings in the topic of net neutrality. There are questions like, who uses the unused bundles at the end of the month? Why should ISPs buy unlimited Internet and resell limited Internet? This school of thought therefore confirms that if Internet bundling is stopped, East Africa will even realise deeper Internet penetration.

From the other side of the corridor, is a group of people who believe that it is because of these bundles and these limitations that we can even enjoy the speeds we are talking about. Although there is more capacity available at the coast due to the optical fibres, the ISPs are let trunk space which is a resource. This resource will be unusable by a good part of society if not well managed. If we allow a group of people to clog and monopolise it with some 'capacity-eating' content, other people will not be able to use it yet they have paid for the service. This introduces a topic of fair user policy. It is upon this argument that ISPs limit on how much someone can download and upload even after paying for a monthly subscription. People in finance also believe if it was not for data capping, Internet wouldn't be a good business to invest in. Because of this bundling business, ISPs can be able to sell more and more bundles and accumulate some profits. Some one has once told me that if it was not for data bundling, it would be hard for people with low income to even afford that small Internet. When Internet is bundled, every one is allowed to buy a portion depending on what he wants and what he can afford. Since we are a majority of low income earners, the only way we can access Internet is by buying small affordable bundles.

Each side of the corridor has more points to put across as regards this topic but these are the fundamental basics. It is upon these basics that I would wish to engage you (my reader). Do you think bundling of Internet has hampered the speed and depth of Internet penetration in developing nations? Would the situation be better without bundling?

Your Opinion is much appreciated.

*Seacom, TEAMs and EASSy

Online Child Labour

As we talk about child rights and child protection on the Internet, a new word in this vocabulary has been developed, 'online child labour'. Although it is a set of words, I strongly believe it is coming down too fast. As the UN has always been fighting against child labour and other child exploitation practices, there is a possibility that no one had ever thought about child labour on the Internet.

In this week's cybersecurity course we have been intensively discussing child protection and it emerged that a number of minors have been used to perpetuate different cyberattacks either with their consent or unknowingly. A number of kids are now being used in online jobs and another good number of kids are looking for online jobs.

As we might note, most of the cyber regulations are not very clear about this topic and many children are doing work online under the sheath. Children have been used in online gaming, and other online job market since the situations are now becoming convenient for them to work online. The internet is becoming cheaper and more readily available, more mobile Internet devices are becoming available at even cheaper costs and the information about online jobs is also increasingly becoming available. All the key driving factors are now favouring online jobs for kids. The situation worsens in developing countries where the children even want the jobs because of the poor living conditions they have and the money is available. The report from UN shows that children are busy in jobs but no numbers are implicated for online jobs, meaning there are no details about this act.

From this situation, the kids are at times not paid or even paid less, some times used in dangerous acts like attacking different services.

It is on this note, that I would want to engage you. Do you think children are being used in 'online child labour' and no one has been following it? Is there some thing that can be done to stop the vice before it even escalates? Besides is it wrong to have kids working, moreover it is online!

Your view is badly wanted.

Thomas Kizito: Who to blame on poor online security

Thomas Kizito: Who to blame on poor online security: Today we all woke up to another bitter truth of another public big figure of the Internet being hacked into and details of users' credential...

Who to blame on poor online security

Today we all woke up to another bitter truth of another public big figure of the Internet being hacked into and details of users' credential posted on websites. The hacking into yahoo described as a union-based SQL injection that managed to exploit 450K users' credentials joins the rest that had happened, the ones we were trying to forget like the linkedin incident.
The credentials of 'Username' and 'password' exposed on the  website by a hacking group calling themselves d33d indicated that more people used weak passwords including 'password123' which are easy to crack even by some one doing the first try. This shows a sign of weakness on the side of service users on the Internet.

Another link shows that these credentials were stored in plain text even for the passwords with out a single hashing algorithm. This reminds me that even my simple Linux Mint Laptop stores passwords in a shadow file which will take you some good time to crack even if you came across the file. One wonders why Yahoo, a giant firm could do such a great mistake?

In another angle, we have seen companies enabling 'strong password' rules for all those who wish to open up accounts with them. These strong password rules are all over the web which include but not limited to, having an alphanumerical password with a capital letter. Having a password phrase longer than 6 characters and other things. But the same report showed that some people had passwords less than three characters, passwords like, 'qwerty', '123456' and so many others. Why could Yahoo of all companies allow such passwords on their network in the first place.

I wouldn't want to mention the firewall and network security to avoid things like Injections because those ones are a little more complex but a company of yahoo's strength and financial standing, would be able to invest in any sort of security measures.

It is on this note that I ask, who would you blame for the rampant hacking of user credentials on popular networks? Would you take the users as weak and lazy, or the providers as people who don't mind about security?

Are African countries ready for the analog switch off?

A big number of African countries have their Television broadcast and received in analog mode over the terrestrial air waves. With digital transmission, the picture and audio of the television station are converted into corresponding binary form (ones and zeros), then subjected to a number of digital manipulations before being transmitted.

Digital transmission allows for better use of available frequency resources allowing other services to be transmitted over the same airwaves at the same time freeing up frequencies for other services. Terrestrial digital television encourages an increase in the number of programmes available, improves quality and accessibility and creates new media services. It also provides for better Television viewing experience as it provides better picture and audio quality. It adds ability for interactive TV and at the same time flexibility to the broadcaster.

Today, these various benefits of digital transmission make a move to digital broadcasting (known as digital migration) imperative for television and radio. This is why the International Telecommunications Union recommended, in the Regional Radiocommunications Conference, 2006(RRC-06), all countries to move to digital broadcasting by the year 2015¹. From this conference, it was resolved that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) would not protect any analog Television broadcasting, meaning analog TV signals will be susceptible to interference from different transmitters thus suggesting an analog switch off. By analog switch off we mean stop support for analog transmission and only support (allow) digital.

To this note, ITU has provided consulting services for broadcasting infrastructure development. It has developed reports and guidelines needed for the Analog to digital transition². The ITU has also provided training in different places and provided close cooperation with regional broadcasting organisation through regular workshops and seminars. It has performed spectrum allocations and wave propagation recommendations, provided a white paper about the transition from analog to digital terrestrial broadcasting and examined terrestrial digital broadcasting technologies through research on the topic.

Africa as a continent, and the African Union in particular the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), has Developed a roadmap on digital migration that involved frequency coordination on transition, timelines and way forward to make sure the deadline by ITU is beaten. ATU has developed a Digital Migration and spectrum policy through a number of consultation meetings and in collaboration with ITU, regional telecommunications bodies and commercial firms in the telecommunications market. It has also held a number of follow-up meetings³ with different regional bodies to monitor progress by different regional bodies and independent nations and harmonise systems for a smooth beating of the ITU deadline.

It however looks like over 42 African countries⁴ out of the 54 are unlikely going to meet the ITU deadline. In the East African Community, Burundi, Uganda and Southern Sudan are listed among these countries. 35 countries had not announced the schedule timetable of events, four countries were still affected by Civil unrest, seven had come up with policy papers and or a Task force as to this effect, four were above the schedule of the policy by at least 6 months, six had piloted the policy, nine had launched with only one completed (Mauritius) by 29^th November 2011.

Uganda as a developing country, formulated a body (Digital Migration Working Group) that spearheaded the process of policy formulation under the ministry of Information and communications technology. This body finalised on the Digital Migration Policy in April 2011⁵ which policy instituted another body (Digital Migration Task Force) tasked to run the process of the digital migration. The government through the mentioned bodies started a campaign of massive public awareness through different existing television channels supported by the Uganda communications Commission. The switch over time table was also generated which was supposed to have three years of dual-Illumination with the national analog switch-off date set for Dec-2012.

Challenges to speedy digital migration

Just like other countries in Africa, Uganda faced a problem of financial limitations, with questions of where were the funds going to be received from. Well knowing that the transition takes at least some years and costs so much and immense influence on society, economy and industries, Uganda was not ready for this challenge. Politics in most of the African countries has been a problem to an extend some countries have not had a running government for a number of years. Policy frame work alignment was also a problem in some African countries where it took too much time to come up with a working policy and even after this policy, the deadline was near coming. National priority remained a challenge is some countries where this matter never made to the top five of national discussion items in some countries. Stakeholder awareness remains a challenge and a number of people are not aware of what is going on.

It is however urged that some Countries can remain in the analog TV transmission even after 2015 basing on the little publicized fact that the 2006 treaty allows for an additional five years for a total of 30 African nations beyond the 2015 cut-off point⁶. (Most Latin American countries, incidentally, have agreed to a switch-off of analogue TV transmissions around 2020). In other words, more than two-thirds of the countries on the African continent are exempt from the 2015 deadline, and instead have a 2020 switch-off date, even though some have voluntarily committed to the earlier time in agreements in regional fora and/ or through domestic policy decisions. Even still the RRC-06 decision stops ITU from intervening to protect a country’s TV broadcast signals in any instances where these are being swamped by a neighbour’s, unless those signals have been switched to digital. In reality, however, this issue of signal swamping or cross-border interference with signals is not a serious issue in most African countries. On the contrary, huge swathes of the African population still do not even receive TV broadcasting signals of any sort, or at best can pick up a single national TV channel. In other cases, African audiences welcome spill-over across borders, which may offer a little more choice. The point then is that African countries can probably still continue analogue TV long after deadline without really any incurring serious disadvantages in terms of aggressive neighbouring broadcasters bothering their national signal space. The few disputes that may occur will not necessarily even require ITU intervention to resolve.

Successful Migration requires Strong leadership of government, Firm decision of analogue TV switch-off, Close cooperation of Regulator and market parties, Clear and timely regulatory framework and Adequate information and assistance to viewers⁷.

A group of people recommend that satellite coverage would provide a cheaper short to medium term alternative as countries are sorting out their houses to get ready for 2015. Countries to subsidise decoders which cost significantly high could also enable the process. Since in some of African countries TV is still under a government monopoly, opening up the business to private investors to allow innovations and investment in the move.

It is from this note that one wonder whether African countries are doing enough to get ready for the analog switch-off. What do you think should be done for these countries to be ready for the deadline. Do you think African countries will continue with analog TV broadcasting even after 2015?

Your view.

1http://guyberger.ru.ac.za/fulltext/Digitalmigration.pdf

2http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/tech/digital_broadcasting/project-dbasiapacific/Digital-Migration-Guidelines_EV6.pdf

3http://atu-uat.org/index.php/en/events-calender

4 http://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/DigitalDividend/DDtoolkit/uploads/assets/downloads/04/analogue-to-digital-migration-in-africa.pptx

5http://www.ict.go.ug/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=56&Itemid=61

6http://www.computerworldzambia.com/articles/2010/01/28/itu-extends-digital-migration-timetable-34-countries

7http://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/DigitalDividend/DDtoolkit/uploads/assets/downloads/04/itu-activites-on-digital-migration.ppt

Windows XP hanging on the windows logo

When windows XP is started in safe mode, it starts fine but when started in normal mode, it will try loading but hangs with a windows XP logo and the progress scroll bars at the bottom.
This happened to me on a computer I never wanted to format because of one of the applications that were installed on the computer. Many google searches I came across on the Internet, were taking me to backing up all the data in safe mode and reinstalling a new copy of windows XP (format).
I almost gave in to formatting the computer after sitting on it for two days, but as I almost did the format, I remembered a saying, "Before you give up, make the last try". My last try was however successful.
What did I do? In the first place, I would like to explain the actual problem.
Many people almost nailed the cause of the problem but I never got through with their help. They all pointed to either a hardware that was conflicting the booting process or a malware that had either eaten away or replaced a dll file required for loading a device with an infected file.
When I installed a parallel XP to scan for viruses on the entire computer, I only found two virus instances in system information directory. I tried with different antiviruses and all showed that the computer was clean. This actually pointed me to eliminating a virus problem. The possibility of having a Hardware conflicting the booting process was ruled out the moment the parallel installation worked fine. However on numerous repairs to the primary XP installation, a dll file failed at (34 minutes) Hardware installation process. This now pointed me to a possibility of a missing dll which when copied to the actual required location, didn't solve the problem still. I finally decided to use the new parallel installation to compare the Device manager with the primary installation. That is when I realised that Nividia Driver was the one messing me up. I uninstalled all nividia drivers from the primary installation and thank God, the booting process succeeded.
The next time this occurs to you, uninstall any possible device from the Device manager, and repair the installation. It will clear and then reinstall the devices. You shall have a clean (almost new) installation.

Thank you.