Ndukwe’s Supporters Linked with Campaign against Akunyili



Supporters of the Executive Vice Chairman of the National Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe, were yesterday accused of being behind the campaign of calumny  against the Minister of Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili, following the controversy that trailed the sale of the 2.3GHz spectrum licence.
A source within the minister's camp said, "It is now clear that those behind the sponsored advertorials for the governorship of Anambra State in 2010 which appeared on May 28, in the Vanguard Newspaper  and the one that appeared about a week later on June 6, 2009   in the Saturday Sun Newspaper, titled “All that Glitters is not Gold”  are also the ones behind the two recent advertorials  in support of Ernest Ndukwe, the  Executive Vice Chairman of NCC titled “Ernest Ndukwe: Silence Is Golden”  that appeared in two national dailies  today, June 24, 2009.
"The link here is that the Anambra gubernatorial adverts and the two adverts in support of Ernest Ndukwe over the controversial sale of the 2.3GHz spectrum were signed by the same person, Chief Ben Odenigbo".
The minister's camp is maintaining that since the said Odenigbo of the Anambra True Demoncrats signed both the Anambra gubernatorial adverts and the one in support of Ernest Ndukwe which appeared in THISDAY and Vanguard Newspapers, then the latest adverts had revealed  those behind the campaign of calumny and character assassination targeted at Akunyili.
"These adverts in the papers was long on adulation and praise for Ndukwe and  spared nothing in the direct and unsubstantiated attacks aimed at the minister. This is evidential of where the attacks are coming from and who is responsible for or paying for them", a source within the minister's camp said.


@ Madam NAFDAC
Your braggadocio and muscle-flexing are unwarranted,period

mbulela:

2ndly, what do you think is the most critical need of the industry at present? (i mean from a practitioner point of view)

Are you asking,bro the most critical need can be summed up into one word FUNDS

I must confess that this thread would really be useful for professionals and upcoming ones like myself. please does anyone have ebooks or links to ebooks that one can study to gain more knowledge into the field. I studied ICT in a private university in Nigeria and i'm rounding up my service year. As a lot of people have been saying, i've always been interested in telecomms. please i and i'm sure a lot of other people would like to know the path they need to go thru to reach a level u guys have gotten to, thx in anticipation

ab][b]Thanks AjanleKoko for your insight, let me quickly point out something as regards ericsson, for freshers, they take mostly first-class graduates and put them[in a management-trainee program.
Before now, i worked in a telecomms firm in the NOC department with the cisco routers,billing servers and internet gateways, there i was a junior sys admin. Now I work in an ISP providing services using licensed RF/Vsat providing VPN links to corporate organisations and public institutions etc.
I'm the senior sys admin also working in the NOC in charge of our Backbone infrastructure and all of our production and application servers(hardware/software).
I took a course in telecomms last year/this year nd i must say it's a very interesting field for me. I'm looking at taking a more comprehensive course in telecomms in India(5months course, cheap and good lecture delivery) because i really have a passion for it but i'm currently torn between going to india and forfeiting my current job. My employers are unwilling to grant me a 5month leave of absense even without pay so it's a difficult decision to resign and start job hunting 5 months later when i'm back in Nigeria.
I'm currently being wooed by a lucrative career as an SAP consultant i'm currently making enquiries and spending lots of time in the NL "About SAP" thread. Now i know that tough decisions make a Man. [/b] [i][/i][color=#990000]
[/b] [b][/b] [/color]



But I know someone that works in ericson with a third class.

But I know someone that works in ericson with a third class.

2 of my friends while serving now work with ericsson and they didnt graduate with First Class

maybe its a new policy

viperman:

They are a lazy bunch when it comes to flexibility. Huawei is definitely the most admired in the industry now when it comes to IN and VAS services.
You're right, their CRBT is one of a kind, though i was presented with a very competitive offering from a vendor by the name - TELENITY- their Caller Ring Back Tone service was brilliant too.

Telenity is a great vendor, solid R&, ex-Ericsson chaps, very strong in software. Their canvas platform is SOA, and provides lots of vertical apps (CRBT, Collect Call, etc). I hear they deployed the one in Zain.

Delta007:

Chief, I know you understand it's not as easy as it sounds to migrate especially when you have a system that is tested, trusted and relatively reliable. It's not that we have a customer base or data that is growing astronomically every minute. However, most manufacturers are gradually moving to IP based systems. This is our challenge as we are left with no other option(s) than to take a hard look at this "new" trend. We are currently "fighting" with Alcatel cos they have made a business decision to shift their focus solely to MPLS and are no longer going to be supporting our network of TDM muxes worth several millions of dollars. I can see machine-to-machine technology being implemented down the road (definitely not now). There are some security and regulatory issues with IP that are currently being sorted. Most FEP are IP based now and IP is slowly but gradually creeping in. These are same challenges facing most telecoms depts in the utilities and oil platforms today (out here in the West).

You also have to realise that there are several other field devices like RTUs, etc in remote areas with skinny banwidth and no IP capability because they were installed in the days of Abraham. It takes lots to make such decisions. Funny enough, the shareholders and BoDs are looking at their dollars and they hardly fathom why you want to spend $10million to upgrade a network that is relatively stable & reliable and does not significantly increase revenue. The Telcos have a different playing field.

I'm in the utilities industry and control all generating (hydro, coal, windfarms, etc) stations & substations from a Control Centre; still Energy but not oil. Although in Nigeria we are used to outages, power outages in the Western world is not a norm; even with natural disasters (hurricanes, storms etc), you still have to answer questions why there was an outage and why it took so long to get it back on. Hence, we must maintain a very robust and reliable network; that's one major reason why utilities have their own terrestrial radio network and are not eager to give it up. The oil platforms are driven by profit and can hardly afford any downtime either.

On the issue of control, I see your point. Always difficult to shift what works. But sooner or later, as you saw with Alcatel, the service providers are going to make life easier for you. The real issues are not with the legacy radio equipment out there, but if the fundamentals of what you're monitoring even support M2M, using newer bearers like SMS or packet data (GPRS etc). To get around that would certainly require upgrades of the underlying DCS systems you have in place. Nice to know even the developed world faces migration challenges.

I think it was because your ID had Canada as a location, that I assumed you were in oil and gas. All same anyways.

mbulela:

on a different note.
what is holding number portability in the GSM industry?
how do you see the industry panning out when it is introduced.

2ndly, what do you think is the most critical need of the industry at present? (i mean from a practitioner point of view)

IMHO, there is only one problem is regulation.

Frankly I think Ernest has run out of ideas. They have issued licenses for universal access to everybody, 3G/UMTS to the big 3 guys, now they are issuing 2.3GHZ (Wimax I suppose) licenses to some corporations, without no clear idea of what the underlying strategy is, or what are the standards, technology direction, and so many other knotty issues. NCC is not there to just be selling license or frequency, we should strategically attract investment into the sector that will address all areas.

We should have end-to-end participation, from the service providers selling to the end customer, to the infrastructure providers, long distance carriers, international traffic carriers/roaming traffic hubs, who are supposed to be selling service to the service providers. Now if you buy, say, the Wimax license, are you going to provide data services or will it include voice?

How do you deal with site acquisition, power issues, issues around territorialism? How do you backhaul the traffic, and also provide access to the outside world and the Internet? What about VOIP, is it legal, and if so, are there regulations guiding its deployment?

Should goverment not be working on legislation relating to the long-term future of the business, ownership of the telcos, how to minimize capital flight and maximize local capacity utilization, sort of like the local content thing and the oil & gas reforms currently ongoing?

Those are the areas that I think regulation needs to address, so the operators can start to co-pete, and if there is any competing, it would be done on service differentiation.


As per number portability, that didn't do too well in SA, despite the pre-launch hype (Cell C thought that would be their big sell), and NCC (again!) has not come up with any specific guidelines, just their usual we-wanna-have-NP way of doing things.

@AjanleKoko

I think you are wrong, HW equipments are rugged and highly reliable, do not based your notion on the fact that the big two operators (MTN & Zain) in Nigeria have their doubt about HW equipments. Imagine, China Mobile, China Telecoms, Telefonica, BT, TATA, all using HW equipments whether ACCESS or CORE or VAS.
Again, saying HW is cheap is wrong, HW is just flexible when it comes to prices and payment.

HW is an end to end Telecommunication vendor with about 43% of it workforce in R&D.

hmmnn, you guys dont know what you are saying about quality!!!, i work with Huawei technologies as a RNP & O engr,, have you tried our BTS3606E or our latest BTS 3900dbs(does not need shelter or AC, Portable) it is out of this world!!! or our smoking PARC BSC that averages over 8,000 Erl per frame?
so many of our products are still unrevealed.
if you think this equipments are cheap please think again because

almost all these operators you call big boys are owing huawei millions of dollars of unpayed bills.

, lets give it to the china guys, they are very innovative, pushful and resourceful.
THEY PRACTICALLY CRASHED THE PRICES OF TELEKOMS SERVICES and TARRIFFS on the Nigerian market!!
thumbs up HUAWEEEEIIIII

donaremu:

@AjanleKoko

I think you are wrong, HW equipments are rugged and highly reliable, do not based your notion on the fact that the big two operators (MTN & Zain) in Nigeria have their doubt about HW equipments. Imagine, China Mobile, China Telecoms, Telefonica, BT, TATA, all using HW equipments whether ACCESS or CORE or VAS.
Again, saying HW is cheap is wrong, HW is just flexible when it comes to prices and payment.

HW is an end to end Telecommunication vendor with about 43% of it workforce in R&.

Dude,
Did you read my post? I never said HW equipment is of poor quality.
If you look at my post, you'll see I cited the fact that the very first vendor to achieve commercial LTE rollout is HW. Telenor and TeliaSonera are running on HW core NGN infrastructure, and if you are in telecoms, you'll know these are not mai mai operators in Europe.

Nice posting Guys,

Cant we make it more interactive?

hook up to www.skyelectron.com/gumzo I will have the telecom room running with the poster here as chair. Lets make it happen in there.

Cheers

Greetings colleagues, you guys are too much. can you imagine the whole lot of certification you have to get? any way no problem, as long as the brain can carry.
But, I myself have MCP as my first certification, and I hope to get more like MCSA and MCSE. I am a graduate in electronics/electrical engr.
Pls can I get a link where I can apply for JAB so as to build in my career.
1love.

Greetings colleagues, you guys are too much. can you imagine the whole lot of certification you have to get? any way no problem, as long as the brain can carry.
But, I myself have MCP as my first certification, and I hope to get  more like MCSA and MCSE. I am a graduate in electronics/electrical engr.
Pls can I get a link where I can apply for JAB so as to build in my career.
1love.

U guys are good. Can someone shed more light on PDH and SDH payloads?

I be lawyer ooo, but I find the discussions very educative. Its not easy working with technical people in the telecoms industry. You guys come up with all these acronyms and abbreviations that I think are merely meant to confuse those of us who work in the support services

FRA:

I be lawyer ooo, but I find the discussions very educative. Its not easy working with technical people in the telecoms industry. You guys come up with all these acronyms and abbreviations that I think are merely meant to confuse those of us who work in the support services

Hahahahaha. Bros, we are not out to confuse anyone. I think its just a way of shortening things and having a universal accronym that all can understand. If an Ericsson guy is talking to a Huawei guy or an Alcatel lady, GPRS is GPRS, SDH is SDH, GSM is GSM. It also transcends some languages. Whether you speak spanish or french or german, once you mention VAS or WiMAX or HSDPA, they mostly know what you are talking about!

Eventually, whether you are technical or not, with time you begin to understand these abbreviations. Funny enough some people actually begin to understand what you are talking about without knowing the full meaning of the abbreviation. Would you believe that some in Nigeria, everyone mentions GSM - but i am sure millions do not know its full meaning.

thank God i ve found my people.my name s christian,a final yr UNIBEN EEE with option in telecommunication.presently i m stucked in my final project research.i ll b vry glad if any1 here helps me with materials,downloads or direction 2go abou it.the topic is 'A STUDY OF QUALITY OF SERUICE CONTROL IN 3G COMMUNICATION IN NIGERIA', Pls i nid help

Entry-level. work as a Wireless Field Engineer for one of the major (& oldest) Wireless ISPs in Nigeria.
Taught RF Network Design & Implementation at TTC Mobile early last year.
B.Eng Electrical & Computer Eng'g - On of the FUT's in Nigeria
Completed NYSC February this year.
Currently building a skillset in Wireless Security and Wireless VoIP, WiMAX, a lil' Infrastructure Virtualization and UNIX (bash) Shell scripting (i think at this point the word 'wireless' has repeated itself too many times ) Taken Certification exams in Wireless Security, Administration and working on Enterprise Routing and Switching [[- CWNA, CWSP, CCNA in View (self-study, & I'm seriously not a fan of braindumps)]]
Really hoping to become an authority in this field soon.

, & great, great, great topic. I cant say that enough.

Hey guys,
Nice contributions so far.
Any billing/OSS/CRM professionals in the house?

really nice thread,im a fresh graduate witout any of dese knowlegde,can som1 advice me on how to go about it,like exams n courses i should start takin

Hi guys,i really need your advice please.I am a graduate of Computer science,I have done N+ and also,I am a cisco certified network associate(CCNA) but there seems to be no job coming at all.Now I am thinking of doing something different from networking path but i am not so sure may be I am taking the right decision because,I will like to do something that will enhance my skills in IT and also,create more chances of getting a job.
I want you to enlighten me on which of these two courses i can take-ORACLE or JAVA.thanks

kokoye:

Nice thread guys,

Always been interested in telcomms from birth . . the 2 degrees I have are telecomms related.  did my internship with Multichoice sevral yrs ago, worked with 2 ISPS in Nigeria.  did CCNA and MSCE over 10yrs ago (old school abi?)

 I'm still in the wireless telecoms field as a Knowledge Management Analyst.

Does that count for anything?

Oh! yes, it does.

AjanleKoko:

Hey guys,
Nice contributions so far.
Any billing/OSS/CRM professionals in the house?

Not Quite sure, I qualify as one, but I have worked 2yrs as project consultant in the telecoms industry developing MVNO's & VAS was involved in testing loads of Tariffs and Priceplan, EDR,CDR used Amdocs and CbossBilling software in germany, Are there any roles along this lines in naija telecoms

Anyone knows anything about ZTE?
In china,they are rated higher than Huawei.
I worked at a company where ZTE deployed a full scale CDMA network.
The project is still ongoing but i was able to witness the main installations (BSS,MSC,MGW,OMC,BSC)
I didn't witness the radio side (PDH and SDH)

While the project was going on,ZTE had issues with Huawei. The contract was signed at $120 with ZTE and then later on we heard that Huawei went through the backdoor and told management that they could execute same contract for $80million.
We later learnt that the Chinese ministry of commerce had to step into the issue over there in China as the matter became a serious one.

They have a very good CRBT and voice messaging system. They have excellent VAS too. But their billing is not so good as they usually recommend lifetree from india.

Well, so much for the technicalities. one of the major challenges being faced by telecom guys is Risk Management and no mention is being made of this.

Moves:

Not Quite sure, I qualify as one, but I have worked 2yrs as project consultant in the telecoms industry developing MVNO's & VAS was involved in testing loads of Tariffs and Priceplan, EDR,CDR used Amdocs and CbossBilling software in germany, Are there any roles along this lines in naija telecoms

Hi,
Sure you do qualify. And roles like yours abound in naija. Though, rather than Amdocs and CBOSS, the most popular charging system you would find in Nigeria is CS3.0/4.0 from Ericsson, which the two largest operators, MTN and Zain, are running. One operator has BSCS, a couple have Huawei's OCS (online charging system) which I think is prolly the first truly convergent solution deployed in these parts. for the Customer Care and postpaid billing side, it varies among operators. the Arab operations (Zain and etisalat) run TABS from International Turnkey Systems, Glo I think is doing Siebel for CRM. Lots of opportunities managing billing ops, CRM/ERP, setting up, administering and testing price plans.

hello everyone, i will like to start a career in telecom. pls, advise me which profesional exams i should take. thanks.

@ajanlekoko

please i have been enjoying all your contribution ever since.

kindly let us discuss offline.

my email is telecomideas@gmail.com or telecomideas@yahoo.com i will make every conversation strictly confidential.

Thanks.

@Ajanlekoko
For quite some time now i have been a secret fan of yours cos any post from you are quite very educating and always informating.

I have lots of interest in the IT/Telecoms but back in the days when I graduated from Secondary sch, i have phobia forMathematics (phobia-matics)
So i end up in the Applied sciences(Sci. Lab Tech) and I later have a degree in the Social Sciences (Geography).

I have some IT or let me say computer knowlegde, though I did one certificate course in 2002, did SIWES in a Cafe then my NYSC with an IT Company as Systems Engineer, there I was expose to lots of stuffs and it was quite challenging experience, you know i need to work extra hard to convince my colleaguages and boss so i read every nite,

Now i want to do a certification, which one will be ok for me? And do you know any reputable IT firm, mind you NIIT is to expensive for me! I work in an insurance company as marketing executive but for real my interest is in IT, Please advise though my case seems somehow cos i have noted the fact that most IT guys are always Electrical/telecom Engineer right from school.

I am looking at CCNA because of my Networking experience which i think i know some stuffs about and some troubleshooting stuffs. I use to think I know some stuffs but when I read this thread, i know i Know nothing, i first got confused then lost with some of the terms and i must say i am into Vsat, Radios, switches etc though and many of you guys stuffs is about telecomms, but at least i suppose to know a bit.

Please say something Oga, Ajanlekoko,

what is the issue?

None of you wants to answer questions

QUITE UNFORTUNATE

JUST TOO BAD

Read KIWIs,MARKOS, postS in 'about sap' thread and learn

@nniah, maybe they're too busy. i asked a question earlier, and nobody seemed to give a sh**, the poster and co just continued with people that seem to be already deeply rooted in the field. It's no use if others and would-be enthusiast cant be carried along and their salient questions answered, yes just like Kiwi and co in the "About SAP" thread. It's quite pitiable.

nnaiah:

what is the issue?

None of you wants to answer questions

QUITE UNFORTUNATE

JUST TOO BAD

Read KIWIs,MARKOS, postS in 'about sap' thread and learn

No vex, sir. Just been a hectic couple of weeks.
We will answer questions, not to worry. You know say we don dey old, unlike those fellas you mentioned!

guseman:

Now i want to do a certification, which one will be ok for me? And do you know any reputable IT firm, mind you NIIT is to expensive for me! I work in an insurance company as marketing executive but for real my interest is in IT, Please advise though my case seems somehow cos i have noted the fact that most IT guys are always Electrical/telecom Engineer right from school.

I am looking at CCNA because of my Networking experience which i think i know some stuffs about and some troubleshooting stuffs. I use to think I know some stuffs but when I read this thread, i know i Know nothing, i first got confused then lost with some of the terms and i must say i am into Vsat, Radios, switches etc though and many of you guys stuffs is about telecomms, but at least i suppose to know a bit.

Please say something Oga, Ajanlekoko,

Hi, my guy
Start from Cisco CCNA. You say you are into VSAT and radio, is that from your cybercafe experience? Good. use the CCNA to build up on your internetworkinh knowledge. But try to follow the voice track when you do CCNP. The  new trend now is unified communications (voice, data, video, messaging, presence applications (Instant Messaging) ) integrated together for customers. It's a good track for an aspiring network engineer.

Don't worry about the mathematics. You just need to have a good understanding of how these things work.

ideas78:

@ajanlekoko

please i have been enjoying all your contribution ever since.

kindly let us discuss offline.

my email is telecomideas@gmail.com or telecomideas@yahoo.com i will make every conversation strictly confidential.

Thanks.

ok. i will send you an email.

olagboye:

hello everyone, i will like to start a career in telecom. pls, advise me which profesional exams i should take. thanks.

See post above, bro. Follow same path.