Cybersurf – Africa Telecom 2004 – Cairo
May 3, 2004
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, coming to you this morning from Cairo, Egypt. I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang - and yes, you heard right - coming to you from Cairo where I am attending the Africa Telecom 2004 exhibition and forum.
The International Telecommunications Union event – Africa Telecoms has already been held in Egypt before and at least twice in South Africa. The whole aim of the event is to have top technology manufacturers display their wares at an exhibition while at the same time there is a parallel forum where business people, government officials and other interested parties discuss policies, strategies, technologies, how to implement and how to regulate them.
The atmosphere here is bullish as Egypt is asserting itself as the new Internet leader in Africa. There is an air of self confidence as the country shows off the considerable strides it has made in recent years.
Later today, the ITU is going to release a fairly positive report about telecommunications growth in Africa over the last few years. The report points to the tremendous growth of the mobile telephone markets in Africa saying that this is the first continent where the number of cellphones has outstripped the number of landlines. It also says that the number of cellphone users in Africa has doubled between 2001 and 2004.
These figures are very encouraging, creating the impression that Africa has suddenly become a world leader in mobile telephone penetration, but in fact these figures look impressive simply because they are compared to the incredibly poor rollout of fixed line phones in Africa.
Fixed line telephony has in Africa been largely the responsibility of governments and more often than not the private sector has set up and operated the cell phone networks. It can, therefore be argued that if you want to help Africans get access to the latest information technology, let the private sector do it.
However, no-one is seriously arguing that a complete, laissez faire free-for-all would help bridge the digital divide – there is broad consensus that a free market system run under the guidance of a truly independent IT regulator - is the best model to maximise Internet access.
The real problem is that while most African governments do recognise the importance of a regulator and of well defined policies to help promote IT access, only about one third of the countries have actually opened their domestic markets and set up a regulator with teeth. Critics argue that because the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, ICASA has been less than effective in releasing the Telkom stranglehold on telecommunications, South Africa is not one of the select group.
More on this and other issues raised here at the Africa Telecom in Cairo next week in Cybersurf.
Till then, keep on surfing.
…/ends
3 May 2004
22 April 2004
Freedom Day – 26 April 04
Hello, howzit and welcome to Cybersurf – the Freedom Day edition. This is your weekly web window, when we wax lyrical on the best of the Internet – I am your Cyberhost Steven Lang.
Yes, tomorrow is Freedom day so today is a good time to find out all you can about all the events taking place.
If Freedom day means we have to feel good about being South African, then there is no better place to visit than the South Africa info site – which can be found at www.southafrica.info.
The site bills itself as the official South Africa gateway– and it was put together by the Big Media web site design company for the International Marketing Council of South Africa.
Overall the site has a fresh, modern look and feel. It has the texture of a happy news site – plenty of press releases that look like news articles. All the content has something positive to say about South Africa – particularly about South Africans abroad.
Lead article is about how South Africans are going to celebrate 10 years of freedom in Trafalgar square, London, the second story is about Ushaka – a South African musical touring Europe; New York celebrates South African film and in Boston, a South African wheel chair athlete is feted as guest of honour at a baseball match.
There is a section inviting you – the reader - to write to Fifa explaining why this country should host the 2010 soccer world cup.
The South Africa – Alive with Possibility is truly an excellent site especially if you need to find out the positive side of this country.
If you click on the link to “Ten Years of Democracy”, you will see more stories and links about the many events that will celebrate our freedom day. There are links to stories such as: Newtown celebrates ten years; SA’s gay community celebrates ten; Cape Town Opera 10 for ten and profiles on nine South African families – makes you wonder what happened to the last one.?
There are also links to other - Ten Years of Democracy sites such as the UK based Network South Africa which you can find at www.sa2004.co.uk/ - which looks quite a lot like www.Southafrica.info – and then there is a truly excellent history site at: www.sahistory.org.za – it is visually a little sombre – having no fancy graphics, but it has very good content – and always remember “Content is King”
This advice should have been heeded by the people who designed the government web site for ten years of democracy. They even got their own dedicated domain name http://www.10years.gov.za – I really don’t know if they were still contructing it when I looked at it last Thursday but the main page offers you a choice of two sections – “Documents” or “Statements” – I think it is one of the most boring sites I have ever seen.
Anyway, I am quite sure that tomorrow’s celebrations won’t be boring –
If you would like to read the script for this program – you will find it on my personal site at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com . Thanx for listening and remember to keep on surfing
Hello, howzit and welcome to Cybersurf – the Freedom Day edition. This is your weekly web window, when we wax lyrical on the best of the Internet – I am your Cyberhost Steven Lang.
Yes, tomorrow is Freedom day so today is a good time to find out all you can about all the events taking place.
If Freedom day means we have to feel good about being South African, then there is no better place to visit than the South Africa info site – which can be found at www.southafrica.info.
The site bills itself as the official South Africa gateway– and it was put together by the Big Media web site design company for the International Marketing Council of South Africa.
Overall the site has a fresh, modern look and feel. It has the texture of a happy news site – plenty of press releases that look like news articles. All the content has something positive to say about South Africa – particularly about South Africans abroad.
Lead article is about how South Africans are going to celebrate 10 years of freedom in Trafalgar square, London, the second story is about Ushaka – a South African musical touring Europe; New York celebrates South African film and in Boston, a South African wheel chair athlete is feted as guest of honour at a baseball match.
There is a section inviting you – the reader - to write to Fifa explaining why this country should host the 2010 soccer world cup.
The South Africa – Alive with Possibility is truly an excellent site especially if you need to find out the positive side of this country.
If you click on the link to “Ten Years of Democracy”, you will see more stories and links about the many events that will celebrate our freedom day. There are links to stories such as: Newtown celebrates ten years; SA’s gay community celebrates ten; Cape Town Opera 10 for ten and profiles on nine South African families – makes you wonder what happened to the last one.?
There are also links to other - Ten Years of Democracy sites such as the UK based Network South Africa which you can find at www.sa2004.co.uk/ - which looks quite a lot like www.Southafrica.info – and then there is a truly excellent history site at: www.sahistory.org.za – it is visually a little sombre – having no fancy graphics, but it has very good content – and always remember “Content is King”
This advice should have been heeded by the people who designed the government web site for ten years of democracy. They even got their own dedicated domain name http://www.10years.gov.za – I really don’t know if they were still contructing it when I looked at it last Thursday but the main page offers you a choice of two sections – “Documents” or “Statements” – I think it is one of the most boring sites I have ever seen.
Anyway, I am quite sure that tomorrow’s celebrations won’t be boring –
If you would like to read the script for this program – you will find it on my personal site at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com . Thanx for listening and remember to keep on surfing
19 April 2004
My Wireless – April 19, 2004
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – your weekly window on the world wide web – I am your Cyberhost - Steven Lang.
This weekend I have been totally and utterly absorbed surfing the web. This is not in itself terribly unusual, since every weekend I try to surf as much as possible – but this weekend I had extra incentive.
I was given a mywireless modem and laptop to test. The modem is a sentech product and if you would like to find out more about it, you can go directly to the sentech.co.za web site for more details – but in the meantime – let me share my experience with you.
The modem looks like a bulky PDA with a flip up antena – it could also look like a fat cellphone and you also need to charge it ocassionaly like a cellphone.
The signal strength indicator also reminds one of a cellphone – it has four red lights that indicate signal strength – four means you are rocking on maximum broadband; three for slightly less; two means your signal is still very usable and one means you’re about to lose a shaky connection.
The mywireless modem does need one cable to connect to the lap top via USB ports, but it does not physically connect to anything else – especially, and very definitely not to a phone wire.
The beauty of wireless is that it works anywhere – I was not confined to my study, I could surf in the lounge or in the garden, I could surf in a coffee shop, I could take it to a friends house and show off the test equipment.
If I was sure that some idiot wouldn’t shoot me and steal the modem, I could even take to a public park. Since the signal covers most of Johannesburg, you can take it just about anywhere.
Secondly – the connection is always on – this means that costs are not dependent on usage – you can down load stuff all day every day and not have to worry about your phone bill – and because it doesn’t use a phone line, you and your family can still use the phone to talk on – I belive some people use it for that.
It get’s better still – download speed is extremely fast – it is after all broadband. I was not able to test how fast – but Sentech offers three speeds – 128, 256 and 512 KBPS – I suspect I was testing the lower end version, but the was certainly much faster than my normal 56 k modem at home – and even faster than my connection speed on the SABC’s network.
I have tested the mywireless modem and seen that it really works and works very well – there is however a downside, as you might have guessed – the price. At R650 per month for the entry level modem, it is cheaper than ADSL; more expensive than ISDN – but quite frankly too expensive for most people. A business person could probaby justify the cost, but for normal people who just love using the web R650 is too much.
Sentech also requires you to sign a 24 month contract – in my view that is too long in an environment where technolgy is changing all the time. My wireless is great this week – but who knows what is going to happen nhext week.
That’s it for today, have to go back to my testing you know – don’t forget to tune in next Monday for more Cybersurf.
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – your weekly window on the world wide web – I am your Cyberhost - Steven Lang.
This weekend I have been totally and utterly absorbed surfing the web. This is not in itself terribly unusual, since every weekend I try to surf as much as possible – but this weekend I had extra incentive.
I was given a mywireless modem and laptop to test. The modem is a sentech product and if you would like to find out more about it, you can go directly to the sentech.co.za web site for more details – but in the meantime – let me share my experience with you.
The modem looks like a bulky PDA with a flip up antena – it could also look like a fat cellphone and you also need to charge it ocassionaly like a cellphone.
The signal strength indicator also reminds one of a cellphone – it has four red lights that indicate signal strength – four means you are rocking on maximum broadband; three for slightly less; two means your signal is still very usable and one means you’re about to lose a shaky connection.
The mywireless modem does need one cable to connect to the lap top via USB ports, but it does not physically connect to anything else – especially, and very definitely not to a phone wire.
The beauty of wireless is that it works anywhere – I was not confined to my study, I could surf in the lounge or in the garden, I could surf in a coffee shop, I could take it to a friends house and show off the test equipment.
If I was sure that some idiot wouldn’t shoot me and steal the modem, I could even take to a public park. Since the signal covers most of Johannesburg, you can take it just about anywhere.
Secondly – the connection is always on – this means that costs are not dependent on usage – you can down load stuff all day every day and not have to worry about your phone bill – and because it doesn’t use a phone line, you and your family can still use the phone to talk on – I belive some people use it for that.
It get’s better still – download speed is extremely fast – it is after all broadband. I was not able to test how fast – but Sentech offers three speeds – 128, 256 and 512 KBPS – I suspect I was testing the lower end version, but the was certainly much faster than my normal 56 k modem at home – and even faster than my connection speed on the SABC’s network.
I have tested the mywireless modem and seen that it really works and works very well – there is however a downside, as you might have guessed – the price. At R650 per month for the entry level modem, it is cheaper than ADSL; more expensive than ISDN – but quite frankly too expensive for most people. A business person could probaby justify the cost, but for normal people who just love using the web R650 is too much.
Sentech also requires you to sign a 24 month contract – in my view that is too long in an environment where technolgy is changing all the time. My wireless is great this week – but who knows what is going to happen nhext week.
That’s it for today, have to go back to my testing you know – don’t forget to tune in next Monday for more Cybersurf.
4 April 2004
Elections 2004
April 5, 2004
Hello, good morning and how do you do? This is Cybersurf, your weekly window on the web and I am Steven Lang.
Today’s program is, as you might have expected, chock full of election related web sites, and I promise to put this script on my personal blog so that you can recover all the other addresses that I mention. So do not stress, I’ll give you the address, where you can find this script at the end of the program.
But before we look at the election stuff – here is some good news from Google – the world’s most successful search engine is testing its own web mail service. You cannot sign up for it – yet – but gmail – that is what the service is known as - – gmail offers one thousand megabytes of free storage space – so you will never have to delete any mail, and it will all be searchable.
To find out more about the pending service check out gmail.google.com.
Back to the campaign trail – we are now less than ten days away from voting day - April 14 so it is not surprising that all the media houses are putting up special features on the elections.
Our own SABCnews.com has a special elections category, and on results day, the elections feature will link up to the IEC’s computer system and publish the results directly onto the site without human intervention – in other words the SABC’s results system will be automatically updated from the minute the first result is put into the IEC’s system right until the last seats are allocated.
The site also has a feature carrying all the latest opinion poll data from the latest SABC/Markinor survey on voter attitudes about the elections
Other sites have also made a special effort – for example – the Mail and Guardian online – at mg.co.za has a rather creative, interactive section that helps you choose which party you should vote for. It does this with an interactive quiz – asking questions that direct you to the party most consistent with your views.
If you would prefer to read an in-depth analysis of the upcoming elections you should go to EISA.org.za – EISA stands for the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa – it is an ngo site and has very valuable information about democracy and political processes.
An just in case you thought that everyone was only concerned about the April fourteen elections, the demarcation board is already hard at working preparing for next year’s municipal elections. The demarcation board site at demarcation.org.za is truly fascinating because it has maps of all the voting districts in the country, lists of the new names of municipalities and you can even drill down and find a map with your own street and the location of your nearest voting station.
Now if you would like to find any of the addresses of the sites I mentioned in today’s program you can click on my own personal blog which can be found at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com – let me repeat that
And so we come the end of this week’s election edition of Cybersurf. Enjoy the festive season, drive safely, don’t forget to vote – it’s the right thing to do - and remember to keep on surfing.
April 5, 2004
Hello, good morning and how do you do? This is Cybersurf, your weekly window on the web and I am Steven Lang.
Today’s program is, as you might have expected, chock full of election related web sites, and I promise to put this script on my personal blog so that you can recover all the other addresses that I mention. So do not stress, I’ll give you the address, where you can find this script at the end of the program.
But before we look at the election stuff – here is some good news from Google – the world’s most successful search engine is testing its own web mail service. You cannot sign up for it – yet – but gmail – that is what the service is known as - – gmail offers one thousand megabytes of free storage space – so you will never have to delete any mail, and it will all be searchable.
To find out more about the pending service check out gmail.google.com.
Back to the campaign trail – we are now less than ten days away from voting day - April 14 so it is not surprising that all the media houses are putting up special features on the elections.
Our own SABCnews.com has a special elections category, and on results day, the elections feature will link up to the IEC’s computer system and publish the results directly onto the site without human intervention – in other words the SABC’s results system will be automatically updated from the minute the first result is put into the IEC’s system right until the last seats are allocated.
The site also has a feature carrying all the latest opinion poll data from the latest SABC/Markinor survey on voter attitudes about the elections
Other sites have also made a special effort – for example – the Mail and Guardian online – at mg.co.za has a rather creative, interactive section that helps you choose which party you should vote for. It does this with an interactive quiz – asking questions that direct you to the party most consistent with your views.
If you would prefer to read an in-depth analysis of the upcoming elections you should go to EISA.org.za – EISA stands for the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa – it is an ngo site and has very valuable information about democracy and political processes.
An just in case you thought that everyone was only concerned about the April fourteen elections, the demarcation board is already hard at working preparing for next year’s municipal elections. The demarcation board site at demarcation.org.za is truly fascinating because it has maps of all the voting districts in the country, lists of the new names of municipalities and you can even drill down and find a map with your own street and the location of your nearest voting station.
Now if you would like to find any of the addresses of the sites I mentioned in today’s program you can click on my own personal blog which can be found at www.stevenlang.blogspot.com – let me repeat that
And so we come the end of this week’s election edition of Cybersurf. Enjoy the festive season, drive safely, don’t forget to vote – it’s the right thing to do - and remember to keep on surfing.
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