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Spend less and get more internet

If you're like me, you want to get more Gigabytes and pay less money.

My main tip is to use less video, especially by using lower resolution video settings.  I use the lowest possible youtube video resolution on my laptop.
Some people autoplay youtube videos on their phone - I have autoplay OFF.  I just watch when I want, not when I'm asleep looool.

I buy a lot of gigabytes on my modem.  There are smaller plans for phones.  These usually have fewer MB or GB but are generally more expensive per GB.  I'm going to check for an even better plan - the rates should be going down, down.
Some people let Whatsapp auto-download all incoming media - I turn that setting off.
I don't worry about the small stuff, like app downloads, many apps are just a few MB or dozens of MB, which is manageable.
I can't control very much about all the updating and notifying on my Android device, but those operations are not very heavy on MB anyway.  Actually, I switch almost all notifications off, but that's more because I like peace and quiet, not for the cost.  And I get irritated with so many updates, but maybe there's a reason for them, I don't know.

Other than that, the things I pay attention to:

• I choose smaller packages when I download torrents, like movie torrents.  Say I have an option over 3GB and another under 1GB, I choose the smaller one.  
• Also, now that I'm starting to use mobile more, I'm looking at trying out the bandwidth-saving apps like Google Go and Youtube Go, maybe, if I have the time.  

More Tips from the experts: 

Choose The Right Package

Make sure you select a package that accommodates all your needs; several options have been made available to cater for different user requirements.

Secure Your Modem

Reset the modem default password immediately and never share your password. We recommend using a combination of alphanumeric characters that is easy for you to remember but hard for others to guess. Change your passwords periodically.

Be very Careful with Torrents

Torrents are a popular way of quickly downloading large files over the Internet. When downloading a file, your system will also upload at the same time. You are paying for both downloading and uploading traffic. In many cases, the upload data is higher than the download data. You can control the upload traffic in the settings of the torrent software.

Voice over IP (VoIP) and Webcams

Using the HD-Quality desktop FaceTime, Skype and other similar utilities can be useful, fun, and exciting they also consume both uplink and downlink bandwidth. Consider turning off the video when making long calls or after the initial minutes of your call to save on bandwidth.

High-Definition (HD) Videos

Most video providers, including YouTube, give you the option of HD picture quality while viewing. The higher the quality of the video, the more bandwidth is consumed. Carefully consider each video and determine whether you truly need top quality and advise everyone in the household to do the same.

Automatic Software Updates

Software updates are useful and increase the reliability and functionality of your system but be aware of the bandwidth they consume. With most homes having several systems per user all the updates can take gigabytes. Monitor your bandwidth usage to know when best to apply updates manually.

Independently monitor your bandwidth consumption

You can track your bandwidth usage on your modem as well as using third-party software like My Data manager on each device connected to your modem to monitor your actual usage.

Online backups and File Synchronization via Cloud

Whenever you use your DropBox and similar utilities to synchronize files between computers bandwidth is utilized. Online backups also consume a lot of bandwidth especially for the first full backup.

These tips are to enlighten our customers so they are savvy users and get the most of their broadband service. Hope you continue to enjoy the service and the access it creates to help you achieve more! 

SOURCE - Swift Networks 

I mean, the main thing is that internet is getting cheaper, so yaaaayyyy enjoy it.

Source: Data Costs Across Some Major Cities In Africa
(July 2018, in TechCabal)
They cite about 1GB for N1000.  I usually buy about 50GB for N10,000 - a good rate. 

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Everybody's talking about all the bigly things b.s. can do and everybody wanna be an influenza and dunno why my people so confident how they can sell hot air

Fake it till you make it: meet the wolves of Instagram |Symeon Brown https://t.co/9LuWfChOFT

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 19, 2018

How to get rich quick in Silicon Valley | Corey Pein https://t.co/HSKDMsz00m

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 17, 2018

It's just another sad Gold Rush.  

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Google's new CEO

Larry Page, co-founder (with Sergey Brin), steps down up as CEO of google:
"Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I've been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google."

Sergey and Larry become President and CEO respectively of a new super-company Alphabet (abc.xyz) that includes G for Google.

click for 1001 pictures

Everybody's talking about Sundar Pichai, the young nerd from Tamil Nadu.  

Advert: If you love technology backstories, join this IP Law course online, free, now,
Internet Giants: The Law and Technology of Media Platforms
offered by Coursera/U.Chicago

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Motivation: Leading CEOs, Leading tech billionaires, Leading websites, ...

From this best CEOs of 2014 list :
5. Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts
What did Wilson do? First and foremost, Wilson spearheaded a corporate culture change centred on being “Player-First”. This translates into a strategy that is more in line with customer expectations by offering more free-to-play games with in-app purchase opportunities.

4. John Martin, Gilead Sciences

...an $84,000 drug will get all sorts of people, and governments, upset about price gouging, 

...but the net-net is ... $8.5bn in sales during its first nine months. 

In a tough business environment, Martin managed to lead Gilead via value-based pricing strategies, successful drug launches and a promising drug pipeline.

3.  Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba
...the largest IPO the world has ever seen, raising $25bn in the process. 
...the world’s biggest e-commerce company, generating 2014 sales double that of Amazon and eBay combined
...also on the way to becoming one of the biggest banks in China through its Alipay app.

2. Kevin Plank, Under Armour 

...four straight quarters of more than 30% growth and 18 straight quarters of more than 20% growth.

... just surpassed Adidas, now second only to Nike in the US

1. Elon Musk
Heads two innovative companies: Tesla and SpaceX
Tesla electric-cars are more and more popular, while SpaceX cut down the price of satellite launches to $100m, got a $2.6bn contract from NASA to carry US astronauts to and from orbit, after demonstrating several successful missions in 2014

Which sites were popular in 2014?

Click to see the top 100 websites

Also from the BBC, how many internet billionaires are there?  More than 20 are profiled here.

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Big Boy Bill

"I start with architecture, and Mark starts with products, and Steve Jobs started with aesthetics."

Bill Gates, by Roberto Parada

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140313

ICT IN CHINA: Aspiration and Innovation in Chinese telecoms companies

By IGBERAESE J. Abumere, DOSUNMU Ayomide, CHINAGOROM Y. Chinonyerem, and OLULOLA Oluwasefunmi Tolulope

INTRODUCTION

The Chinese telecom companies are recognized as the most innovative industry in China.  Besides Huawei, there was also the emergence of other telecom companies such as Datang, Great Dragon, ZTE among others.

We have many questions about the emergence of these Chinese telecom industries.  The most important question is: why did Huawei and ZTE emerge as the leading telecom companies in

China rather than other companies with strong backgrounds and higher starting point like Datang and Great Dragon.  One reason is what the author calls Aspiration Level. 

ASPIRATION LEVEL

Company	Aspiration Level	Description	Result
Huawei	Wolf	Military style, high survival pressure, accurate eyesight, high efficiency	Purpose to be the first class enterprise
ZTE	Bull	State owned background, but learnt to be pragmatic in the south business environment.	Purpose to overtake Huawei
Datang	Half academic, half business	Financed by the government to do R&D for a long while	Purpose to do standardisation
Dragon	Firework	Originally with high aspiration level, but cannot follow further constrained by system problem.	Almost disappeared
Eastcom	Businessman	From the beginning, it aimed to earn money	Tried to upgrade but eventually still ends up with OEM.

Aspiration level is a soft index which is difficult to measure unlike sales revenue and even investment level which can be expressed clearly by numbers. Aspiration level is an index which is difficult to measure but heavily influences the company’s employees, like an invisible power.

A company’s aspiration level can be reflected in a company’s ultimate goal---through analysis of a company’s ultimate goal, we can preliminarily identify the tone of the company’s culture. Obviously, Huawei has been recognized as the “wolf company” in the industry for a long while, it means a company with high aspiration level to be innovative and creative. 

Further, the aspiration level reflects in how entrepreneurial the company remains. Huawei has kept investing research and development - up to 10% of its total revenue - for many years.  In 2009, Huawei became the No.1 patent applicant (it was No.2 in 2010.)

Huawei’s high aspiration level may be related to the founder’s thoughts of Huawei and the background of the company.  Huawei is typical grass-roots company without any government or state background, it all developed by its own efforts. The founder Ren Zhenfei was an army man for many years, possessing soldier’s qualities – a strict, high pressure, persistent personality. As the spiritual leader of Huawei, Ren’s personality has largely influenced the culture of the company.  

LEARNING AND INNOVATIVE CAPABILITY

Innovation is both a process and a product. It is

• the organizational and social processes that produce innovation, such as individual creativity, organizational structure, environmental context, and social and economic factors

• an outcome that manifests itself in new products, product features, and production methods

Huawei employed the open innovation method (the use of purposive flows and outflows of

knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of innovation

respectively)

Innovative capacity and marketing capacity complement to each other. In fact, marketing capacity divorced from learning and innovative capability could only bring temporary resplendence.  A company without capable marketing capability cannot raise sufficient resource to support learning and innovation.

Huawei and ZTE are persistent in R&D investment, but they are also very careful in investing

in R&D: every decision has to be verified by market demand, confirmed by market potential.

Huawei’s catch-up in technology learning totally relies on their own development. The most common method is that they import foreign technology or product, then deploy large amount of engineers to imitate and modify. This is called technology-borrower. When Mr. Ren was invited to give a talk after visiting couple of hi-tech companies, he said something meaningful: “Founder has technology but no management; Lenovo has management but no technology; Huawei has neither technology nor management.”   

Many audiences thought that it was a humble comment from Mr. Ren. However, from Ren’s point of view, the real “core technology” should “create opportunity and lead consumption”, which is quite different from Huawei’s “seek and grasp opportunity” technology.  

Generally speaking, usually the Chinese enterprise can only notice an opportunity after it emerges from potential stage, if they can make correct decision and grasp the opportunity then they can get success.   Huawei is a successful example of this.   However those leading MNC are conducting another method by “creating opportunity and leading consumption” relying on their R&D to create opportunity.  Thus Huawei is defined as a “late comer” in the market: for late comer, it is to seek and grasp opportunity; for forerunner it is to create opportunity and lead consumption. Ren’s point is that Huawei’s technology which can only ”seek and grasp opportunity” is not the true technology, only the “creating opportunity and leading consumption” can be defined as true technology .

Technology innovation is fundamentally based on innovation talent, while talent used is heavily

relevant to capital and culture. Where can Huawei acquire these talents? Most of their employees are directly hired from university. For example, Huawei hired directly from campus less than 2000 graduates from 2002 to 2008. In the year of 2009 it reached 6000. This is called “circling talents” strategy. For example, Huawei claimed that they would hire all the engineering master graduates of the top 10 in the class from top universities.

Major source: A COMPARISON STUDY OF THE CHINESE TELECOM INDUSTRY,  published 2011.  By Hui Yan, Aalborg University, Denmark. 

The four authors are undergraduate students in the College of Engineering at Bells University of Technology, Ogun State, Nigeria.  They prepared this paper under my supervision for the course CEN 302: Introduction to ICT. 

Business Process Outsourcing in India and related HR Challenges

Notes written by Ozodi ARIAHU and Aramide BELLO

(Based on Thite, M. & Russell, R. (2007). India and Business Process Outsourcing.)

India is a country of complete contrasts – five star hotels surrounded by slums, white-collar workers rushing past unskilled labourers using primitive technologies, new globally branded cars navigating congested roads along with antiquated models, freeways and flyovers that suddenly lead to unpaved, snarled roads and so on. 

India Country data:

·         Three times the size of Nigeria, with triple the population density

·         Economy ranked 12^th largest in the world

·         From the 2011 census, 58.2% of the labour force is in agricultural production (cultivators and labourers), 4 % in household industry

·         The remaining 37.6% would include both manufacturing industry and service provision

The Indian IT/ITeS/BPO Sector

The spread of the internet, with cheap and abundant telecommunications bandwidth, has enabled businesses to parcel out white-collar work to specialist outside suppliers, with countries such as India emerging as important hubs for producing services for consumption at the other end of the fibre-optic cable (Edwards, 2004).  This type of work is classified under service provision and termed the Information Technology, Information Technology-Enabled Services, and Business Process Outsourcing (IT/ITeS/BPO) sector.  

IT services include

·         Systems integration and information systems consulting.

·         Application development and support as well as IT training services.

IT-enabled Services (ITeS) include

·         Back-office data entry and processing.

·         Customer contact services (such as complaints, tele-marketing, collections support).

·         Corporate support functions (such as HR, finance, procurement, IT services).

·         Knowledge services and decision-support (such as customer analytics, claims and risk

·         management and consultancy).

·         Research and development services.

Outsourcing is the practice in which companies move or contract out some or all of their manufacturing or service operations to other companies that specialize in those operations or to companies in other countries. 

An example would be an American jeans manufacturer that closes a factory in the United States and hires a contractor in India to produce its jeans, which are then imported and sold with the American company’s logo.  According to Forrester Research, nearly half a million computer hardware and software jobs are expected to be outsourced from the United States to other countries by the year 2015.

Corporate executives say outsourcing helps their companies lower costs, increase profits, stay competitive, and that they ultimately transfer cost savings to the consumer as lower prices.

Currently, the BPO sector appears poised on an unstable knife edge. It involves a young, highly educated workforce conducting often routine work for which, in many cases, it is patently over qualified. As a result, the explosive growth of BPO in India has also given rise to startling attrition rates and working conditions that, although perhaps (temporarily) acceptable in urban India may well prove to be far short of employee aspirations. 

A brief history of Business Process Outsourcing in India

To most Indian software companies, BPO came in handy in the face of the downturn in the IT industry. Another stroke of luck for the industry was the cheap availability of abundant and under-utilised fibre optic cables laid under the sea by western companies during the e-commerce hype generated in the 1990s and their increasing bandwidth capacity (Friedman, 2005).

While the Indian software industry took more than 10 years to mature and climb up the value chain, the Indian ITeS/BPO industry has taken just 5 years (between 2000 and 2005) to do just that. Many of the top Indian software companies, namely; Infosys, Wipro and Satyam, have now set up subsidiary companies such as Progeon, Wipro BPO, and Nipuana, which are their

ITES arms.

Today, there are around 3000 IT companies in India currently exporting to over 150 countries with an employee base of around 700,000 and the top 5 Indian IT software & service exporters are Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and HCL (Nasscom-c, 2005).

In line with this growth, the ITeS/BPO/KPO industry now employs not only generic graduates, but also MBAs, doctors, engineers and chartered accountants as process executives. Even for Customer Service Representative jobs, which are relatively low-skilled, the vast majority of employees are university graduates.

Apart from its sheer size, India currently constitutes an intriguing part of the globalization story

for its pioneering of what can be termed an Export Led Services Provision (ELSP) model. Today, anybody who visits India will see that changes are everywhere and the country is well and truly on the move.

Despite the spectacular growth and visibility of the IT/ITES sector, it is still largely irrelevant to the vast majority of Indians.  Altogether, the combined IT/ITeS/BPO sector employs under 1 million workers out of a total workforce (waged, salaried and other) that is approaching half a billion workers.   Thus it is that despite the tremendous success of IT and outsourcing in India, poverty persists with 35% of all Indians living on less than one US dollar per day. 

Labour and Human Resource considerations

Although Indian IT/ITeS/BPO workers are very inexpensive by Western standards, their salaries are high by Indian standards.  Currently, the sector is devoid of trade unions, while existing unions appear to be unprepared to enter the new economy.  With respect to changes in existing labour codes, a majority of the states have either promulgated a government order or notification permitting all establishments in the respective jurisdictions engaged in IT-enabled services (including call centres) to: work on national holidays; allow women to work through night shifts; and permit offices to function 24 hours a day, all through the year (Nasscom-g, 2005), although such practices have traditionally been banned through urban Shops and Establishment Acts. 

The industry faces skill shortages, but the question here is of quality, not quantity. While it is estimated that approximately 17 million people will be available to the IT industry by 2008 (Nasscom-j, 2005), the problem relates to their employability and trainability.  Jobs in IT minimally require a tertiary degree in engineering, computer science or mathematics, while call centre and data processing operations insist upon a Bachelors’ level degree and high levels of proficiency in spoken and written English.  Most Indians are not employable in the sector, since  literacy rates hover around 65 per cent for the population as a whole and at 45% for females. 

Attrition is the biggest challenge currently facing the ITES/BPO sector. The ‘race for talent’ as one HR manager described it between BPO suppliers is fierce; the poaching of workers has created much distrust among industry participants. Top five reasons for turnover in the industry: dissatisfaction with salaries (47%), lack of career opportunities (45%), leaving to pursue higher education (29%), illness (28%) and physical strain (22%) (DQ-IDC, 2004).

Marriage and pursuing higher education were frequently quoted as the main reasons for attrition. The night shift work that most of the employees are engaged in causes them, particularly, women, to leave this employment when they get married; hence, marriage is given as the reason for attrition.  To retain those workers who would leave for higher education, some companies are beginning to explore the possibility of providing scholarships, tuition reimbursement and special arrangements with education institutions that would allow them to offer courses in the workplace.

BPO companies may feel squeezed for profits.  Clients on multi-year contracts with BPO providers expect costs to fall over the course of the tender as the provider becomes more experienced and familiar with the client’s products and markets.  They also face shortages in leadership and supervisory skills, particularly at the team/project level.

Authors are undergraduate students in Electrical Engineering at Bells University of Technology, Ogun State.  They prepared these notes under my supervision for the course CEN 302: Introduction to ICT. 

ICT gives hope to African Entrepreneurs

By Firdausy Haruna, Mayowa Sanyaolu, and Funke Ajetunmobi

What is ICT?

Information and Communications Technology or (ICT), is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.

The term ICT is now also used to refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.

ICT and Internet Usage in Africa

The ICT sector has been the major economic driver in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade, witnessing an annual compounded growth rate of 40%.  Never before in the history of the continent has the population been as connected as it is today, yet this strong ICT growth trajectory is expected to continue, as penetration rates are still relatively low.

A key indicator in determining access and usage is the price of service, such as for voice and

data. Pricing of voice services in many African countries has become competitive and in line

with the rest of the world, while broadband costs continue to be a mixed bag.  However, when differences in GDP are taken into account as compared to global benchmarks, we in Africa still pay more on a GDP basis due to the lower GDP base.

Notably, the story of mobile penetration across the continent is far better than the Internet. Overall, 45% of African residents have a mobile subscription; this is more than four times the penetration of the Internet.

Internet penetration is dominated by the traditional economic successes in Africa. Countries like Egypt and South Africa have a very high proportion of internet users.  Kenya has also invested heavily in an usable infrastructure.  However the largest by far is that of Nigeria where at least a proportion of the massive oil revenues has been utilized to improve internet availability.

These countries alone have well over 50% of the internet users in Africa, while places like the Congo or Ethiopia have a depressingly small amount of internet users.

The potential for outsourcing

In the world economy at the moment, one of the few growth areas is the ICT sector. It is estimated that in the USA over the next 20 years there will be a shortfall of millions to fill vacancies in the IT and ITC sectors. It is thus essential that other countries take up the slack.

India and China have been very successful in attracting ICT contracts from Europe and America. It is now the time for Africa to seize these new business opportunities.

Africa is well positioned to gain a growing income from Business Process Outsourcing. Not only does it have the internet infrastructure in place but it also has the language abilities. There is a vast pool of Africans who claim English, French and Portuguese as their second language. There is also a sizeable community of Mandarin speakers in Africa. These language skills will prove to be decisive in the future for African BPO prospects.

Undersea cable projects like SEACOM (Kenya) and Main One (Nigeria) are building more fiber optic lines to connect Africa to the rest of the world.  At the same time there has been an upsurge in mobile phone and mobile device use in Africa. There are now in place several companies providing e-banking, e-commerce, e-learning, e-democracy and e-agriculture.

Another encouraging sign for the African ICT scene is the growing number of computer manufacturers in Africa. An increasing number of African countries make computers, software and other applications for mobiles. The image of a hopelessly poor and lagging continent will change as Africa begins to grab more of the global ICT business opportunities.

In terms of education, ambitious plans are underway to provide all school children with a laptop. This can be achieved by cloud technology that allows computers to be built cheaply that still perform complex and memory heavy tasks by using the ability to store data on the cloud. It is certain that future generations of Africans will be even more computer literate.

The rise of censorship

In Malawi, the EBill is the piece of legislation that enables the goverment to control access to the internet by individuals. In true Big Brother style, the state is appointing cyber- inspectors to monitor and inspect online activities.  Move over to Zambia and it’s a similar story, again using the pretext of blocking hate speech, although this is normally considered to be restricted to that speech directed at the rulers of the country. It is a very big job especially now with the introduction of cheaper smart mobile phones with internet capability. Africans love their phones and for many it’s their first experience of the internet in their daily lives.

Where there has been censorship, there has been a huge increase in the amount of security-enabled programs being used in these countries to bypass and protect the monitoring. However it’s also entertainment that is encouraging the use of proxies and VPNs to be used. For example a UK based VPN or proxy server can allow the user to watch British TV from a phone, laptop or mobile device. The cost is fairly low for these services although still expensive for most Africans.

The Internet Gives Hope to African Entrepreneurs

It is not easy starting up a business in Africa, but hopefully the internet will start to make that easier. One of the biggest problems in Africa is the lack of infrastructure both physical and intellectual.  

In brief, some of the key benefits of ICT in Africa over the years include:

·        New job opportunities

·        Improved communication systems

·        Increased market connectivity, particularly with mobile technologies

Some of the major challenges in ICT’s development in Africa are:

·        Inadequate electric power

·        Unevenly distributed internet access, including last-mile issues

·        Shortage of skilled, qualified ICT personnel

-         Weak or backward university curriculum

·        Funding/sponsorship gaps requiring urgent attention

Finally, some key actions that would develop ICT in Africa include:

·        Reducing the cost of access for mobile and broadband

-         Improving the regulatory and competitive environments for operators

-         Better coordination in developing the infrastructure

-         Resolve spectrum constraints to free up access for additional players

-         Government commitment to increasing ICT access

-         Lower taxation of ICT equipment

·        Collaboration by key stakeholders, including government, private-sector and universities

·        Training and capacity-building

Based on the February 2012 ICT Competitiveness in Africa report by Javier Ewing, Nicolas Chevrollier, Maryanna Quigless, Thomas Verghese, and Matthijs Leenderste.

The three authors are students in Telecommunications Engineering at Bells University of Technology, Ogun State.  They prepared this paper under my supervision for the course CEN 302: Introduction to ICT.