The UK Prosperity Fund’s Digital Access Programme and Greenfields Law, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) are set to host a National Technical Conference on Right of Way and Site Build Permitting. The Technical Conference is part of the UK Government’s Technical Assistance package in advancing policy and regulatory reforms on Right of Way with the aim of promoting inclusive and sustainable digital access in the country. At the virtual conference which is scheduled to hold on August 13th, 2020, the findings and recommendations from a technical study on…
Author: DigitalTimesNG
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled sweeping bans on U.S. transactions with China’s ByteDance, owner of video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent, operator of messaging app WeChat, in a major escalation of tensions with Beijing. Reuters reported that the executive orders, which go into effect in 45 days, come after the Trump administration said this week it was stepping up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks and called TikTok and WeChat “significant threats.” The hugely popular Tiktok has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers and the administration over national security concerns surrounding data collection, amid growing…
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami has disclosed that the federal government would continue to protect the interests of all the stakeholders in the telecommunication industry. Pantami disclosed this while delivering a keynote address in a virtual sectoral forum organised by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, (ATCON) which was endorsed and supported by the Ministry, the National Information Technology Development Agency and the Nigerian Communications Commission. The Webinar with the theme, “Meeting the Interests of the Government, Consumers and Telecom and ICT Companies in the Era of COVID-19 and Post COVID -19…
Commercial banks in Nigeria are owing telecommunications companies over N17 billion following the Nigerian Communications Commission’s suspension of its Determination on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) Pricing last year. This disclosure was made by the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta at a virtual forum organised by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) held on Thursday. In furtherance of its mandate to protect the interests of consumers and support a robust telecommunications sector, the NCC recently announced that it had revised the Determination on the USSD. But speaking at the ATCON’s virtual…
There are reports that MTN Group is planning to sell part or all of its $243 million interest in Jumia Technologies AG. This is part of the telco’s effort to raise funds to pay down debt and enter new frontiers. A Bloomberg News report said MTN would be taking advantage of the fact that Jumia’s shares have gained about 142% so far in 2020, recovering from its record lows in 2019. However, private sources told Bloomberg News that no decision about the sale has been reached yet. Jumia, Africa’s largest online retailer, is operational in 14 African countries including Nigeria. Jumia Technologies…
Airtel Africa Plc and Telkom Kenya Ltd have agreed to discontinue the completion of their merger plans due to the lengthy process of the transaction which has been on since February 2019. The two telecom firms resolved not to complete the business combination despite their respective efforts to reach a successful closure and having it drag on for a while. The discontinuation disclosure was made in a notification sent on Wednesday, August 5, 2020, to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) by Airtel Africa and signed by its Group Company Secretary, Simon O’Hara. A subsidiary of Airtel Africa Plc, Airtel Networks…
Global internet outages saw an unprecedented rise during the pandemic, ThousandEyes has revealed, causing disruption for employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ThousandEyes, outages increased by a staggering 63% between January and March and remained elevated through the first half of 2020, with June seeing a 44% surge in disruptions, according to a report in ITPro. Cloud and internet service providers (ISPs) were found to be the hardest hit, experiencing significant increases in network outages between January and July 2020. During that period, cloud providers experienced an estimated 400 outages globally, compared to over 4,500 in ISP networks. When examining total outages,…
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Segun Ogunsanya, has expressed profound appreciation to Nigerians for their unflinching support for and loyalty to the Airtel network as it marks its 10th anniversary. Ogunsanya also announced that Airtel Nigeria, as part of activities marking a decade of doing successful business in Nigeria, would be spending N300m to support the fight against COVID-19, being the final part of the N1.9b the mobile telecommunications company pledged last April at the early stages of the pandemic. He explained that N200m would be invested in refurbishing and equipping a 4-storey admission facility for…
A former Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Professor Tony Iredia has said that Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, must leave the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to do its job. Iredia said this on Wednesday while speaking on Sunrise Daily, a flagship programme on Channels Television. The veteran broadcaster, who was also former Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), emphasized that Alhaji Lai Mohammed is not a regulator and should allow the NBC do its job while he plays a supervisory role. He pointed out that the minister taking over the role of the broadcast regulator creates…
Fiam WiFi, one of Nigeria’s newest telecommunication companies, is set to provide affordable internet services for all, via hotspots, with deep concentration to high density lower income areas and rural communities. Fiam WiFi was licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission in 2018 after meeting the basic requirements. Experts believe technology advancements over the last five years have made deploying and maintaining public Wi-Fi networks easier and less expensive than mobile and LTE operators’ networks. But Akin Marinho, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Fiam WiFi, said in a statement made available to DigitalTimesNG that the emerging telecoms giant is equipped…