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Of note:

South Africa occupied the German colony of South-West Africa during World War I and administered it as a mandate until after World War II, when it annexed the territory. In 1966 the Marxist South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) guerrilla group launched a war of independence for the area that was soon named Namibia, but it was not until 1988 that South Africa agreed to end its administration in accordance with a UN peace plan for the entire region. Namibia won its independence in 1990 and has been governed by SWAPO since. Hifikepunye POHAMBA was elected president in November 2004 in a landslide victory replacing Sam NUJOMA who led the country during its first 14 years of self rule.

• Christian 80% to 90% (Lutheran 50% at least), indigenous beliefs 10% to 20%
• English 7% (official), Afrikaans common language of most of the population and about 60% of the white population, German 32%, indigenous languages 1% (includes Oshivambo, Herero, Nama)

Zimbabwe to Require ISPs to Monitor all Emails

Zimbabwean internet service providers (ISPs) have come out in opposition of a new bill that requires them to monitor all emails and other Web communications.

The new Interception of Communications Bill will allow government to monitor all forms of communication, including post, phonecalls, instant messages and emails.
The Zimbabwean government has likened the law to anti-terror laws in effect in the US and the UK.

According to a BBC article, the bill has still to be passed by the senate, but this is merely "seen as a formality".

The Rest @ Tectonica

Nokia Investing in Africa

We are doing that exactly as I speak in Africa, coming to the new markets earlier than the competition," Kallasvuo said during a Webcast of an investor conference.

"Things are also starting to happen in a major way in Africa." he said. "We are seeing things in Africa now that we saw in China seven or eight years ago."The executive did not say which African countries Nokia saw as the biggest opportunities.

Research firm Gartner said earlier this week that growth in countries such as South Africa and Egypt as key drivers behind a 6 percent increase in phone sales in Europe, Middle East and Africa in the first quarter.

The Rest @ Mobil Africa

Celtel Nigeria Offers Free Weekends

Celtel Nigeria recently announced the introduction of a new promotional offer which gives the company’s loyal pre-paid customers an opportunity to make free on-net calls on Sundays.

The Rest @ Mobil Africa

Vodaphone Cuts Internet Access Fees In Half

Vodafone has upped the ante in the burgeoning mobile broadband market by slashing the price it charges to connect to the high-speed internet from a laptop by half.

Over the past year, European mobile phone companies have competed fiercely for high-spending business users who use mobile phone networks to connect wirelessly to the internet. The deployment of the technology HSDPA across mobile phone networks has tripled the capacity for delivering broadband speeds akin to fixed-line services and has enabled companies such as Vodafone and T-Mobile to chase high-spending business users.

Vodafone has kicked off the latest round of price-cutting in the business space by introducing a flat-rate mobile broadband tariff of £25 a month, almost half the £45 it charged before. It has also amended its "fair usage" policy so users can download three times the amount of data that they could under previous contracts.

The Rest @ the Independant

Siemens has tested 1mm - 1 GPS Polymer Fiber Cable

Researchers at Siemens have transmitted data over polymer optical fiber cable at around 1Gbps, opening up new possibilities for the technology, including easy-to-build home networks linking PCs and high-definition TVs

"Polymer cable enables do-it-yourself installations," project manager Sebastian Randel said Tuesday. Unlike optical fiber made from glass, "It's flexible and it's easy to cut and insert in connectors."

The cable is around 1 millimeter thick, doesn't break easily, and can be cut with a razor blade, according to Randel.
Although glass optical fiber, which is widely used in long-distance and local loop networks, can carry data at much higher speeds than the polymer version, it is also much thicker once wrapped in a protective shield, and breaks if bent too tightly, according to Randel. Cutting it cleanly to attach connectors or make joints requires a diamond blade, he said.

Demand for easy-to-install, low-cost home networking systems is growing as new high-speed services such as IPTV (Internet Protocol television) hit the market.

The Rest @ InfoWorld

Video Media Demands Challenge World Wide Bandwidth

As the flood of data across the internet continues to increase, there are those that say sometime soon it is going to collapse under its own weight. But that is what they said last year.

Web traffic in the 90s was much smaller than today
Back in the early 90s, those of us that were online were just sending text e-mails of a few bytes each, traffic across the main US data lines was estimated at a few terabytes a month, steadily doubling every year.

But the mid 90s saw the arrival of picture-rich websites, and the invention of the MP3. Suddenly each net user wanted megabytes of pictures and music, and the monthly traffic figure exploded.

For the next few years we saw more steady growth with traffic again roughly doubling every year. But since 2003, we have seen another change in the way we use the net.

The YouTube generation want to stream video, and download gigabytes of data in one go.
"In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mails; so it's clearly very different," said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.
"The network is growing up, is starting to get more capacity than it ever had, but it is a challenge. "Video is real-time, it needs to not have mistakes or errors. E-mail can be a little slow. You wouldn't notice if it was 11 seconds rather than 10, but you would notice that on a video."

The Rest @ the BBC

Celtel to Expand Free Roaming to 6 Countires, Plans for 9 More

African mobile operator Celtel has expanded its One Network free roaming to six countries. Already available in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, the service will now also be available to subscribers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo and Gabon.

One Network gives users the same prices when roaming in the six countries that they pay at home and free incoming calls.

Celtel aims to expand the service to all 15 countries where it has a presence in Africa. Inter-regional traffic jumped 300 percent in the first three months after the launch of One Network in the three east African countries, Anna Othoro, Celtel marketing director in Kenya, told Business Day.

The Rest @ Telkom Paper

Essay Project seems on Track

Johannesburg, 4 June 2007 ] - With the imminent construction of the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) has “tentatively” set aside $40 million for project participants

DBSA ICT specialist George Finger says the final amount the bank will provide as investment funding to Eassy participants will depend on how much other investors, such as the African Development Bank and the World Bank, are willing to invest in the project, he says.

“The bank's investment in Eassy can go up or down, depending on how much appetite for risk the other financiers have.”

• Meanwhile, the DBSA is developing a new strategy to give ICT investment a more regional flavour, which will see country lending caps increased, However, he explains the DBSA's 70:30 split in investments in favour of SA would change to a greater focus on regional projects.
• The investment cap for each of the countries in which the DBSA invests has also transformed in line with the changes in policy and regulatory framework, he says.“It is very difficult to state what the new caps will be.

The Rest @ IT Web

Meeting in Malawi to Iron Iron Out Differences on Submarine Cable Projects

Information and communication ministers from about 20 African countries have been invited for a special meeting that is expected to iron out controversies surrounding the ratification of the NEPAD ICT broadband network (NIBN) project.

The project includes the Eastern Africa Sub-Marine Cable System (EASSy) submarine project and Central Corridor Trade and Transport Facilitation Project. EASSy) is an initiative to connect countries of eastern Africa via a high bandwidth fibre optic cable system to the rest of the world. It is considered a milestone in the development of information infrastructure in the region (Wikipedia).

Rwandan state minister for energy and communications Albert Butare told HANA that ministers are expected to meet in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi by the end of June to try and reach a consensus on whether the project can proceed without some member countries signing the protocol.

The ratification for NIBN should be completed by June 30 2007, according to the project time schedule. There are currently disputes and no working consensus among some members over ownership of the US$280 broadband infrastructure.

The Rest @ Tectonic