ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008

The 2008 ITU African conference took place in Cairo, Egypt earlier last moth from the 12th to the 14th. This networking event is an opportunities for manufacturers, regulatory agencies and African government to elaborate a vision of Africa's Information and Communications Technology future. Here are a few highlights I found interesting to note on the way Africa's ICT should move forward.

• Africa and Outsourcing

Here in the USA, politicians and activists are outrages by outsourcing and are doing everything they can to diminish it if not stop it completely. But let's face it, what CEO wouldn't want a customer service center that cost him less than $2/hr per head. I know I would. Well African countries want part of that money too. Even though India's dominance on the market is substantial and doesn't seem to go away anytime soon, many african countries have the advantage to have the same time zone as most countries in the western world. As India's workforce are getting more expensive African can take advantage of it and increase its market share. To do so , many prerequisites need to be fulfilled. There is a need of a more-skilled workforce. Cisco and Microsoft researches agree that about 1 million IT skilled worked are currently needed in Africa. Even though , I would argue that the African diaspora of Europe , the US and Canada can surely offset this deficiency. Another important fact companies would look at before outsourcing jobs in Africa is stability. Many countries are still recovering from War and others a re so unstable that any little spark can start a fire that will plunge them in chaos. So to see an increase in outsourcing jobs in Africa, we need more IT skilled workers, stable governments, incentives for companies ( like tax breaks) and fair regulatory agencies.

• The State of the Continent
  

Africa's mobile networks are more than ever expending. There are about 200 million mobile users in the continent with 66% of its area covered. In five years, 90% of Africa is projected to be covered by a wireless network. This grow can be attributed to the fact that most countries harbor a least 2 mobile companies to compete for customers. Fairer regulatory rules will get this number even higher. The next step would be to focused on providing data access to a majority of the population. The main problem hindering this is the monopoly of international gateway by government. The creation on many submarine projects aims to solve this problem by being more fair. Then the last step would be to focus on intra-country connections which are quasi inexistent. In this case, wireless broadband technologies such as Wimax and HSPA would be required to get the job done.

African Fiber Telecommunication structure

Many people wonder why Internet traffic in Africa is so low or why there's such a low bandwidth utilization in the continent. A big part of theses problems is related to the policy issue of "Open Access".Let me break it down. Africa's international connectivity is provided by one sole cable called SAT 3. That cable was financed by a consortium of 36 operators from Africa, Europe , Asia and the U.S. It lands in Angola, Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Canary Islands.It has a capacity of 120 Gbps but about 40 Gbps are currently used. Each operator, which is, for African countries, the national carrier, owns capacity on the cable depending on their contribution to the project. Non-owners who need international connectivity can get capacity on the cable in one of two ways. They can lease it from the national carrier if they have a license to carry international traffic. Or, they can buy it directly from the pool after the national carrier 5 years exclusivity. That is where comes the problem. Because the incumbent have exclusivity , it can basically charge whatever price it want. What ended up happening is that small ISPs who don't have enough capital to buy capacity from the cable pool or pay the enormous rates charged buy the incumbent settle buy using satellite telecommunication. "Open Access" will actually solve this issue by allowing the ISPs to compete with the incumbent cable capacity. It's a fair competition which will benefit the African countries by increasing the internet bandwidth utilization and making internet available for a wider audience. Among many advantages, adopting an "Open Access" policy will provide a better alternative to expensive and not-so-reliable satellite communications, reduce the cost of communications services, allow international trade and job creation, extent learning and promote social participation.

Neotel WiMAX offering

South African’s first fixed line telecommunications competitor to Telkom, Neotel says it plans to deploy its enterprise WiMAX solution as last mile access in areas where it already has a fibre network. The rollouts will commence in July. Neotel currently has a 12,000km national backhaul fibre network, as well as metro fibre networks. Stefano Mattiello, executive head of the enterprise group said, ‘We are in the rollout phase of our enterprise broadband wireless network and have already established 22 sites’. The service will initially be available in the Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban metropolitan areas, with increased availability as the company continues to rollout its fibre network. Solutions offered to customers are scalable, ranging from 2Mbps to 10Mbps, depending on customer need.

POWER OVER ETHERNET

This is the presentation I gave a couple of weeks ago on power over Ethernet. It focuses on the technology diffusion. I used a Fisher-Pry model to predict how long it will take the technology to reach its full potential.










Theta is the market size
T_0 is the number of years to reach 50% of the market
Alpha is the diffusion rate

BUILDING A WIRELESS NETWORK in Developing Countries PART III

PART III: INSTALLATION CONSIDERATION


When installing a Wireless Access point a couple of consideration need to be taken into account. If the WLAN access point is to be installed outside , it needs to be protected from rain , wind , sun and other elements that may deteriorate it. It needs to be properly grounded to sustain when lightning occurs, power spikes. Also, power needs to be provided to it and antennas need to be installed in such away that will cover the maximum area possible.

• Lightning protection and power spikes
  

It's imperative to properly protect not only your equipment but also all equipments connected to your network against lightning. To do so , you can make use of fuses and circuit breakers. Too often neglected , a simple installation of a circuit breaker can protect network managers from very tragic situations. Another protection is to ground the antenna. When grounding remember that you are trying to accomplish two goals: First you want to create the shortest path from the highest conductive surface to the ground . Then you want to create a circuit to dissipate that excess of energy. The idea is to have the lightning energy to travel through the shortest path thus bypassing the equipment. Power stabilizers and regulators take different level of power and provide the desired voltage. Although , they are very important devices they offer little to no protection from lightning. You should always check power stabilizers after a lightning strike because more than often they'll burn out. Regulators are less likely to burn out.

• Providing Power: Power Over Internet

I actually did a presentation on this subject this week. I'll try to find a way to post the slide on my next post. Basically, Power over Internet is defined in the IEEE 802.3af standard and soon the IEEE 802.3at. The later is expected to be adopted in early 2009 and expect to provide power up to 60W ( more than enough to power a laptop!). The IEEE 802.3af standard was adopted in 2003 and provide 13W of power to Powered Devices. It defines the means of supply power to devices using an Ethernet cable. Power is supply without interfering with data transmission on the same wire. Some Ethernet switches will provide power using the same wires used for data others will use unused wire pairs. Power Over Ethernet is the first internationally approved power standard. The adoption of the new standard promises a bright future for power over Ethernet. Anything can be powered by it laptops , WiMax base stations , the only limit is human's brain.



(To be continued....)

Celebrating African Heroes - CaptainThomas Sankara

Captain Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara ( December 21, 1949 - October 15 , 1987) was the 5th president of Burkina Faso. He changed the countries name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso which mean "country of the upright men". Thomas Sankara had a tremendous charisma. For the 4 years of his presidency, he established his revolution by promoting equal opportunities for women , health care for the poor , new agricultural techniques, fighting corruption. His most striking quality was his integrity. He believed head of office should serve the people and not the other way around. He was killed in a coup d'etat by a former president. His memory will always live in the heart of african youth. He showed us that if we really want to take Africa out of poverty , we , Africans , have to put our mind to it. With more revolution like the one Captain Sankara did , Africa will be in the path to development.

BUILDING A WIRELESS NETWORK in a developing country part 2

Part II : Management

The main tasks required when managing a network are monitoring and troubleshooting. In monitoring the the network , analysis tools should be use to properly determine traffic flow , utilization , an many other performance indicators. Accurate and effective monitoring a network can lead to many benefits: detection of network viruses and intruders , simplification of network problem troubleshooting, and optimization of network performance.
Here are a few statistics management should track when monitoring a network : Wireless ( Received signal , noise , radio data rate ) , Switch (bandwidth usage, packet loss , error rate), Internet (internet usage , DNS request, ping times), System health ( Memory usage , system load).
To achieve all these means , many tools are available for network administrators to use. Network tools display information such ad signal strength. Spot check tools run for a short period of time and comprise program such as ping and protocol analyzers. Trending tools perform monitoring over a long period of time. Throughput testing tools provide actual bandwidth between two points in the network. Intrusion Detection tools search for undesirable traffic and take necessary action. Benchmarking tool estimate maximum performance of the network.
The network can face many problems ranging from misconfiguration to components failure. A few common problems and usual fixed are discussed here. Locally Hosted Websites that allow outside users to access it are prone to being "spidered" by search engines. A common fix is to have a mirror image of the site hosted on a public server.
Open proxies: A proxy server should only be access by user in its internal network user, not from the rest of the internet. Usually people will use open proxies to avoid paying for international bandwidth charges.
Open relay Hosts: Spammers use misconfigured mail server as relay hosts to send bulk email and spams. Mail servers should only be relay hosts for specifies local machines.

With all these tools , monitoring the LAN , the WAN and troubleshooting common network problems provide the network administrator proper means to manage efficiently the network.

Africa needs Fair Trade not Aid

I truly believe that Africa's path out of poverty should be focused on new technologies and appropriate business models. Nevertheless , I would like to take a minute to talk about a non-technology related organization that would help Africa in the same way.
Agriculture employs 50% of the population in developing countries and constitutes more than 33% of their GDP. Yet, Africans are not able to make a decent living through crops culture. A social movement called Fair Trade aims to remediate this situation. The Fair Trade movement is backed by the international Fair Trade Association. Its goal is to promote fair price for developing country's agricultural products sold to developed country. African farmers rarely get a fair price for their crops for many reasons. They lack as access to market information, to markets and credit thus they are unable to adapt production techniques in responses to market information. The result is obvious. African crops are always undervalued and underpriced in the global market. Fair Trade establish a minimum price that correctly reflect the cost of production . They provide farmers with perfect market information to bargain for the true value of their crops.
With the money gain from Fair Trade a lot of farmers are able to develop their communities create schools , small hospitals and bring clean water and electricity to their household. Let's help this initiative by buying products originating from Fair Trade farmers.
Fair Trade certified products sales surpassed 2.3 billions and more than 6 millions disadvantaged farmers in developing countries were able to fund community development projects from Fair Trade certified products sales.

BUILDING A WIRELESS NETWORK in Developing Countries ( Part 1 )

Building a wired network can be quite challenging in developing countries. The biggest issue is that it requires a tremendous amount of investment those countries can't easily obtain. To face this problem , wireless network can be build to provide internet connectivity to the masses. It's cheaper to build , easier and faster to install , and easier to maintain. This is the first of an eight parts article that will challenge the main obstacles faced by people trying to implement a wireless network in those countries :power, management, installation , money , distance, partners and customers , security, information and licensing .


PART I: POWER


First we can use wind power. It is best designed for systems build on hills or mountains. To be effective , wind generator should be 6m higher than any other objects within a distance of 100m , and the average wind speed over the year should be at lest 3 to 4 meter per second. On of the advantage is that the wind generator can charge the batteries even at night as long as there is sufficient wind. Nevertheless, for most locations , the cost of a good wind generators is not justified by the meager amount of wind power it will add to the system.
Secondly , we can use solar power. Solar power uses the ability of certain material to convert solar energy into electrical energy. A few organizations have produced maps that include average values of radiation for different regions. For most of those regions, especially sub-Saharan, the minimum daily radiation is 4,000 watts per meter squared. The amount of power required by wireless equipment depend not only on the architecture but also on the network interfaces and traffic. Generally, a low consumption card will use between 3 to 4W. A high power card consumes around 6W and a repeating station with two radios requires 8-10W. The components required to set up a solar power system are : solar panels, regulator, and batteries. The regulator's role is to avoid overcharging and overdischarging the battery. The cost of implementing this system without taking into account installation cost is about $2,300.
Power Over Ethernet (POE) can be used to provide power to devices. In this case , power is provided to wireless equipment using unused pairs of a standard Ethernet cable. A maximum of 13W can be provided over the cable without interfering with date transmission on the wire.

Solar energy used to power African Villages

An NGO is helping villages to get affordable electricity using solar energy. The sun , a nonperishable source of energy ( at least for billions years to come) on top of being free it's also available for all. Currently, the set up price for a home solar system is between $500-1000 which is way beyond the revenue of an average African. The NGO use fund from various international organizations. The solar energy could definitely be a breakthrough in Africa especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Solar energy can widely spread electricity to remote and rural areas. This would greatly help in the development of technologies , use of computers , access to internet. So we need the government, and company to focus more on solar power to bring the prices down and make it affordable for the average Africa.

More on this story.
Solar energy powers up villages in Cameroon

Unrest in Cameroon - The untold story

Last week in the city of Douala, Cameroon , a peaceful March initiated by the Taxi Drivers Union turned into nationwide unrest in at least 10 cities. The Union demanded a substantial decrease in gas prices that were not affordable anymore by taxi drivers.( At the time , gas price was $1.41 per liter which correspond to $5.31 per gallon. Just for comparison the average gas price in the US in less than $4 per gallon) A couple of days later, the march was overtaken by a variety of people who manifested for their own motives and their own ambition. First, you have those manifesting against the amendment to the constitution the actual president , Paul Biya in office for 25 years now ,is trying to make to stay head of state for another term. Then, you have those marching against the hiking prices of perishable foods ( meat , pasta , rice). Food prices doubled in the past decade in the Central African country as salary were cut in half and unemployment tripled. Finally, and I regret to say it , they were looters. Young people , mostly unemployed took advantage of the chaos to burn cars and buses , loot grocery stores, and gas stations. The police , the army and a few special armed forces were unleashed to bring the peace. The media talks about 100 deaths but the toll is way higher than that, from 200-300 actually.
What the Cameroonian we actually trying to say is that: WE ARE TIRED. We are tired of corruption.We are tired of neo-colonialism. We are tired of foreigners taking our resources. We are tired of not profiting from our resources. We are tired that a small numbers of corrupted bureaucrats brings poverty to our families. We want a new Africa. We want to be able to use our resources , to produce our own oil, build our own industries, to use what we produce and produce what we need.

Celebrating African Heroes-Part 1 ; Patrice Emery Lumumba

Let's celebrate our heroes . The people that gave their lives for freedom , equality , justice and independence. We start with , the first Prime minister of Congo (Kinshasa) , the father of their independence from Belgian imperialism: Patrice Emery Lumumba (2 july 1925 - 17 january 1961).

WiMax network in Cameroon

MTN cameroon chose wimax products from Redline Communications to deploy it's 12-city network. MTN will build base stations and plans to services 700 businesses and 12,000 residential users in the first too year of deployment. WiMax products are based on the IEEE standard 802.16 and are supposed to provide wireless broadband access.Optimally, it can reach speeds of 70Mbps in a 50KM radius. Cameroon , developing country in central Africa, has an obsolete wireline network and would benefit from wireless communications. WiMax could potentially broaden internet usage in Cameroon as cell phones broaden telephony.