Despite Directive, DSTV Continues To Charge for Free-to-Air channels in Nigeria

As far back as middle of 2016, the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) gave a repeat  directive it earlier issued to MultiChoice Nigeria Limited, owners the Digital Satellite Broadcast Television (DStv) to unlock all free-to-air channels irrespective of whether subscribers have active subscriptions would be applied across board on all satellite/pay television stations operating in the country.

Earlier on, the council had issued far-reaching directives to MultiChoice to among other things, make compensations to its subscribers within 90 days, after the council established allegations of violations of consumer rights against the broadcaster.

According to report from ThisDay newspapers, the council specifically ordered DSTV to unlock all free-to-air channels even at the expiration of subscription. DSTV had often refused to release the free to air channels, which should include local television stations whenever current subscription expired. Even though it was learnt that pay television stations are under obligations to release the free to air channels as part of broadcasting agreement signed, DSTV and some of its competitors including Startimes, have continued in the breach.

As ironic as it is, DSTV and its competitors in Nigeria do not pay for the content from local television stations, rather they get paid a subscription by these stations to carry their signals. So by charging their digital television consumers, DSTV is actually making money from two fronts.

But MultiChoice Nigeria, has described as misleading and inaccurate recent media reports accusing it of unfairness to Nigerian subscribers. For some time now, there have been media reports purporting that MultiChoice affected a 20 per cent slash in DStv subscription in countries which it operates, leaving out Nigeria and South Africa.

In a statement by Caroline Oghuma, Public Relations Manager, DStv, the company said subscription rates across countries are easily verified, and that all the facts were on the internet for all to see. While admitting that DStv bouquet subscriptions were slashed in other countries, as reported, she explained that reduction was way below the 20 per cent claimed by the authors of the reports.

On the exclusion of Nigeria from the list of countries affected by the slash, Ms. Oghuma said Nigerian DStv subscribers have always paid lower rates than subscribers in the affected countries and, despite the recent reduction, still pay lower.

“For two years, prices were not increased in Nigeria until April 2015. Even when they were increased, they remained substantially lower than in other countries. MultiChoice made a decision to absorb costs on behalf of the Nigerian subscriber because the company recognizes that the country is passing through a difficult economic phase,” she explained.

While avoiding the other aspect on their not releasing the local television free-to-air channels, She added that the company remained committed to providing improved services and customer-focused initiatives because it values its subscribers. Rather, she said, the company made available toll-free lines on all the mobile telephone networks in the country to ensure subscribers could reach its call centres at no cost when they have issues with the service.

Responding to enquiries, CPC spokesman, Abiodun Obimuyiwa said the council’s directive would be implemented across board as soon as it gets DSTV to comply.

Nairobi to host Africa Tech summit for innovators

Global technology and business leaders will converge in Nairobi next month for the NextGen Africa 2017. The event will connect technology leaders with local developers and entrepreneurs in an effort to engage and collaborate on developing more locally relevant technology.

Microsoft Regional Chief Executive Kunle Awosika says the NextGen Africa 2017 theme is Building for Africa as African entrepreneurs seek to solve business and market-related challenges.

“We believe in the power of the emerging technologies to connect people to key services and boost productivity, while utilizing unique and differentiated business models. Our goal with this event is to bring various players together and collaborate, so that we can build and equip our innovators with the right technology based tools and infrastructure, helping them create and scale more of these solutions,” Awosika noted.

The two-day lineup set for second and third of February will include a series of talks, sessions and forums on topics including cloud, big data, machine learning, the internet of things, digital transformation and technology in emerging markets.

Technology is seen a major player in 2017 growth with prospects of an increase in its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Awosika says disruptive technology will dominate in 2017 especially in the retail sector. 

Avast Lists Jehovah Witness, Facebook, Snapchat, others among Top Apps Draining Your Phone

Antivirus firm Avast claims to have highlighted a number of popular dating, music streaming, personal interest and social network apps that take the battery juice out of your Android devices. According to a recent research report from the popular security provider, smartphone owners looking to speed-up their devices should ditch certain popular social network, dating, fitness and music applications to boost performance.

Recently, Avast Software released a new report unveiling the most battery- and storage-draining apps for Android. From news to new friends, the functionality of the apps in question span a wide range, but they’re all connected by a penchant for sucking the life out of your battery.

The global Avast Android Performance & Trend Report reveals the top overall performance-draining apps. Facebook-owned properties took three of the top spots, including the Facebook app itself. Second place went to musical.ly, a relatively new app that lets you record a 15 second clip of you and your friends lip-syncing to a popular song. It’s proven wildly successful, with more than 100 million users watching and uploading clips, but in Avast’s tests, it managed to drain Samsung Galaxy S6 from 100 percent to empty in just 2 hours.

According to their research, the official Jehovah’s Witnesses app, Skype-competitor WhatsCall, bookworms’ favourite Wattpad and TayuTau Pedometer, join perennial performance-hoggers like Tinder, Snapchat, Facebook and Spotify.

Avast also has some advice for the New Year:

It said: "Feeling that post-Christmas slump? Time to reach for the running gear to work off all that turkey and your favourite fitness apps. These apps are all the rage, but they’re also heavy battery drainers and a case in point is TayuTau Pedometer.

"A great app for tracking how many steps you’ve taken, how many calories you’ve burned and how far you have walked, it also ranks at number seven in the top drainers as it runs automatically in the background on Android phones without you needing to start it up. "Taking it on a 7 mile run lasting 50 minutes drained the battery of our test phone by 31 per cent! Make sure you have charged up before you head out of the house."

Bookworms are likely to be frustrated that Wattpad was ranked in third place in Avast's list of the most resource heavy apps overall. This is likely caused by its notifications and followers features, which constantly check for new books and act more like Facebook than a true reading app. If you want to limit the drain on your phone, best go to the Settings section and turn off all notifications.

However, it is the official app produced by Jehovah’s Witnesses that tops the charts this quarter for being one of the heaviest users of smartphone storage, as it allows users to download their bible in multiple languages, as well as letting them browse a huge library of high-resolution video tutorials.

If you are keen to get hold of this content, Avast Antivirus recommends deleting the videos once you’ve watched them to free up your storage. Avast collated the report based on anonymous data from over three million smartphone users, which revealed the apps that are sucking power, data and storage from your smartphone without you even realizing.

UK watchdog calls on Diebold Nixdorf to address competition concerns amidst positive market outlook

Anti-trust watchdog in the United kingdom the CMA, has suggested a number of remedies to counteract a reduction in competition for the supply of cashpoints in the UK in the wake of the $1.8 billion merger between Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf. The Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally found that Diebold’s acquisition of Wincor may reduce competition in the UK ATM market, leaving only NCR as a credible competitor.

Announcing the findings, Martin Cave, inquiry chair, says: "That NCR is the only other substantial UK supplier of ATMs was a significant factor that underpinned the CMA’s investigation. It is important to protect against the risk of weakened competition in the supply of cashpoints which could lead to reduced quality and increased prices."

To remedy the issue, the CMA is recommending that Diebold Nixdorf either sells certain assets, or agrees to supply services to potential new market entrants.

Responding to the ruling, Diebold Nixdorf says: "Diebold Nixdorf is pleased that the CMA has not called into question the global transaction and integration of the businesses outside the United Kingdom, and that any remedies required to preserve competition in the United Kingdom will involve the least costly and intrusive remedies needed. Diebold Nixdorf is also pleased that the CMA is committed to continue working with the company and that the CMA will consider both behavioral and structural remedies to address and resolve their review as expediently as possible. The process is expected to be completed during the first half of 2017."

Evidence provided to the inquiry suggests that, outside of NCR, there is a weak competitive constraint on the merged companies. The group also found that any expansion of suppliers on the periphery of the market would be unlikely to occur within a time frame or on a sufficient scale to prevent the loss of competitive constraint arising from the merger. As a result, the merger may be expected to result in higher prices and/or a loss of quality.

The CMA is today also issuing a notice of possible remedies which outlines measures the CMA could take if it still believes the merger may be expected to lead to an SLC when it makes its final decision. Martin Cave, Inquiry Chair, said: “We looked carefully at the market forces influencing the supply of ATMs in the UK. That NCR is the only other substantial UK supplier of ATMs was a significant factor that underpinned the CMA’s investigation. It is important to protect against the risk of weakened competition in the supply of cashpoints which could lead to reduced quality and increased prices”.

The group is now inviting responses to its provisional findings and remedies notice, and will continue to assess all the evidence before it makes its final decision.

This is coming on the heels of a new ATM market outlook report from MarketReportsOnline, that clearly shows where the ATM market is pointing to. According to the report, trends suggest that the market growth potential lies majorly in Asia-Pacific region with China and India being the most potential targets for the industry due to growing banking population and demand for cash. Moreover, despite the considerate decline in ATM installed base in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, the worldwide ATM market is expected to escalate.

The factor such as growing GDP, rising replacement demand of ATMs in developed countries, integration of check-imaging technology, cash recycle and continuously growing demand in developing countries are the primary growth drivers of global ATM market. However, the threat of security breaches, dynamic technological advancements and operational threats for ISOs hinder the market growth.

The report "Global ATM Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2016-2020)" analyzes the development of this market, with focus on the Asia-Pacific, Americas and EMEA markets. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the market are discussed in detail in this report. The four major players: NCR Corporation, Diebold Inc., Wincor Nixdorf and Hitachi Ltd. are being profiled along with their key financials and strategies for growth. The report contains a comprehensive analysis of the global ATM market along with the study of the regional markets.

HP Debuts Hybrids range with 15-inch Spectre x360 at CES 2017 to rival Macbook

According to CNet.com, there's been no shortage of praise for HP's line of Spectre x360 hybrid laptops. Both an early-2016 model and a late-2016 update received high marks in our reviews, thanks to a slim aluminum body, excellent keyboard and a good selection of ports (even if the late-2016 version retained only one full-size USB port).

The lead update for CES 2017 is a new 15-inch version of the Spectre x360, and it looks and feels different from its predecessor, but not always in the way you'd expect. This new x360 has a slimmer screen bezel, which is a trendy new feature to add right now, down to just 4.65mm on the left and right sides of the 15.6-inch display. The overall footprint is also smaller, while the glass trackpad has gotten wider, although not nearly as big as the massive trackpad in the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

But there's a trade-off involved. This new version is actually a little thicker and heavier than the one it replaces, moving up to 4.4 pounds and 17.9mm thick. That's because there's an Nvidia GeForce 940MX discrete graphics option, as well as a battery that HP says is 23 percent larger than before.

The new 15-inch Spectre x360 will be available around the end of February, starting at $1,249 in the US (£1,017 or AU$1,737). The smaller 13-inch Spectre x360 is also getting a 4K screen option, plus optional Intel Iris graphics (slightly better than the default Intel graphics in most laptops), and the same cool-looking ash silver color as the 15-inch model.

HP is doing a good job of focusing on growth and emerging areas while still supporting legacy markets for the volume it provides. By investing a lot into innovation and taking risks and it’s really starting to show with their latest products like the HP Spectre, HP ENVY Curved AIO, Folio G1, the Elite X3 smartphone, HP has amped up their premium notebook game over the course of the past few years more than any company tracked. Those new products are paying off financially or, if nothing else, from an ‘innovator’ brand metric giving HP some technology leadership points with customers and channels. Many of these improvements have been driven by HP’s own ‘insights engine’ where the company listens and reacts to consumer input. HP wants these improvements to translate into net promoter score which HP watches like a hawk.  This brings us to CES where HP updated a bevy of products as well as releasing some brand new ones.

HP is leading CES off with a series of new products that build on the creative products that HP has been working on over the past few years and boosting their premium profile. The HP EliteBook x360 is one of those products, made for the  enterprise bringing durability, manageability and security along with it. HP says that their north stars are design, security, and collaboration to address a future workforce and workplace where millennials and their co-workers are more mobile and working together is both easier and more challenging in some ways more than ever before. I believe the better the tools that IT provides and the more consumer-looking and acting they are, the less likely their employees will bring their own devices and create more security challenges.

HP says the EliteBook x360 is the thinnest business convertible in the world at 14.9mm, which should come as a relief for a lot of business users looking for a convertible.

"More investments needed to improve telecoms services" Spectranet CEO...as company Launch Full Speed Unlimited Gold Plan

David Venn the Chief Executive Officer of Spectranet Nigeria, a provider of 4G/LTE technology and broadband service provider in the country, has weighed in on the seeming stagnancy currently being recorded in the telecommunications sector of the country. Speaking recently to Guardian newspapers, Mr. Venn explained that with almost 100 million Internet users in Nigeria, only about 95 percent are using even 3G with very few operators operating 4G.

In his words, “Spectranet initial investment was in 2009 with the licensing, and the 4G-LTE wasn’t available then, so the company launched with an earlier technology. As soon as LTE was available, we got it swapped with 4G-LTE Technology. So 4G-LTE has only been around here with Spectranet for about three to four years. So that is what we have here, we don’t have the old technology”. And that is when the growth really started, because 4G drive much faster and better experience for the customer. And it is more affordable too; the technology is more efficient in the way it uses the spectrum to get more data.”

Because the investments within that period was quite low, he could not talk about numbers but hinted that it is in hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested. “All these equipment, and the modems as well, mostly the network equipment all come from overseas, because there is only a certain number of suppliers around the world that make these equipment. They are extremely sophisticated equipment; none of them is made in Nigeria, it’s all imported. All of that is in dollars and there’s been a huge investment in all that. We have spent a bit more in the past couple of years in rolling out, in marketing and in trying to get our name out there, but most of the investment is going to equipment and network infrastructure”.

While explaining the major reasons for the low internet penetration in the country, the Spectranet boss opined: “Let me start from 3G. It was designed as a voice network with good data. You make most of your money out of voice calls. They don’t make much money out of data. It is not because data is not used very much, but because per megabit of voice phone call, they make about 100 times more revenue from voice calls than they will make for data. This is because data is quite cheap based on network capacity.

This is one of the reasons why the mobile operators don’t really want data everywhere. Because if there’s data everywhere, most people will start using WhatsApp and Skype, they will stop using the voice networks, they will stop paying for voice calls. I see in Nigeria that in the next couple of years, maybe two or three years, no one is going to pay for calls, they’ll just be buying data bundles, that is what is happening in Europe now. In United Kingdom (UK), I have five SIM cards on one network, and they are all one account with 10 Gigabyte plan. I pay a certain amount for that and they are all shared. All the phone calls and SMS are free, unlimited”.

He added that, the current data revolution is changing a lot of things. A lot of people now watch video, entertainment via Internet streaming, much more than they used to. “Two years ago, if someone sent you a Facebook message with a video with it, you delete it straightaway, because you don’t want it to consume your data bundle. But now it starts playing automatically, and people watch it. People now watch more videos, and YouTube. You get a lot more content. And that’s a major change in the past two years in Nigeria” he concluded.

Describing the huge investment needed to offer telecom services in Nigeria, he added that, “People are quite often surprised by how many towers it takes to service a city. In Lagos alone, we have 400 towers. We have over 600 towers across the four cities. Lagos is more spread out. And you provide towers not just for coverage, but for capacity. So most of the investments we spent in the past year have really been to enhance the capacity of the network, because the coverage was already there. But as the tower starts to get busy, we need to put more towers to take up the capacity, so that you can support the customers. Because you can just get so many customers on the tower before it starts getting congested. We install new base stations all the time”.

On his feelings towards the pricing of data services, Mr. Venn said: “The actual cost of data at the moment is too low. The problem is that the GSM operators have been competing on price for data, and they are taking the data way down below the cost of provision. And they are complaining that WhatsApp shouldn’t be allowed because it is eating into their voice revenue. That is because they are charging too low for data. And the problem is that when the data charge is too low, no one is going to invest in rolling out more networks for data”.

In a clear demonstration of Spectranet 4G’s seriousness in the Nigerian market, the company has also introduced a new promotional offer tagged full speed unlimited gold plan into its range of data plans for subscribers to enjoy. The CEO, David Venn, disclosed that the introduction of the unlimited plan is aimed at meeting the ever growing demand by subscribers for more data to consume as they continue to experience the great service of Spectranet. “We decided to provide what the subscribers want as a listening and caring brand” he said.

The unlimited data plan, according to him, is at a price of Eighteen Thousand Naira (N18,000) for a one month subscription that’ll provide users with unlimited upload and download without worries or fear of poor connection. The Unlimited Gold plan is designed for heavy data users that live an active lifestyle and who want to stay connected for a whole month to accomplish all their business and personal tasks.

“As you are aware, we take our rollover policy very seriously.  All our existing customers who migrate to this plan will have their unused data warehoused in their account and this will be credited back to them should they choose to return to their existing capped plan” he said.

Aside the full speed unlimited Gold plan, we are also introducing a Unified Value Plan of 40GB for N12,500 only.   As part of our effort to ensure that more people have access to the affordable quality internet service of Spectranet.

Microsoft Surface Phone: Everything you need to know

Microsoft has had very limited success with mobile, struggling to acquire any meaningful amount of market share. With titans like Apple and Google currently dominating the industry, Microsoft is under immense pressure to crack mobile successfully.

Unfortunately, the Surface Phone will probably be the last roll of the dice for Microsoft. Despite the company making much of Windows 10 Mobile, the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL weren’t able to carry Microsoft to mobile glory. Now, Microsoft needs to launch a perfect phone that can convert already invested iOS and Android users to Windows.

The Surface team has done a great job of disrupting the computing industry in recent years, with the Surface Pro, Surface Book and Surface Studio devices all proving to be a thorn in the backside of Apple. Can the Surface Phone do the same for mobile? Read on to find out what we know so far.

No one can say for sure when the Surface Phone is going to come out, but its known that it’s on the way. In November, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Australia Financial Review that Microsoft is working on the “ultimate mobile device”, admitting that the company “missed the mobile boom”. That’s not confirmation of the "Surface Phone" name, but it’s clear-cut proof that a new mobile device is on the way.

During the interview, Nadella explained: “We will continue to be in the phone market, not as defined by today’s market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device.”

But that’s not the only evidence available. Back in January, it emerged that Microsoft had obtained the following domain name: surfacephone.com. The domain currently redirects to Microsoft’s homepage, but given Microsoft’s existing naming conventions for devices (Surface Book, Surface Pro, etc), it seems obvious what the intentions may be. That said, companies often buy up relevant domain names just to stop competitors bagging them, so the name "Surface Phone" may never actually be used.

According to Winbeta, Microsoft plans to finally kill off the Lumia brand – the current Microsoft phone line, formerly of Nokia – in December 2016. That means we’d likely see a Surface Phone that same month, or very shortly afterwards.

Microsoft hasn’t announced any press events for such a device, but it’s likely that the company will be attending the CES 2017 tradeshow in Las Vegas in early January next year. That would be a perfect opportunity to launch a new device, although it would mean missing the Christmas spending season.

In any case, we’re in agreement with the lion’s share of rumours that suggest we’ll see a Q1/Q2 release in 2017.