Accra, Ghana April 23, 2010: “Cyber crime has become extremely pervasive since the invention of the Internet.   In Ghana, many people associate the phenomena with Sakawa, which is Internet fraud or scamming. However, cyber crime goes beyond Internet fraud, it could also involve the hacking of networks, which could destroy a nation’s critical infrastructure. The perpetrators of cyber crime have become very sophisticated, so there is the need to protect our Internet resources by waging warfare against them,” said Prof Nii Narku Quaynor.

Prof Quaynor, made these remarks at social night, when he chaired a social gathering

organised by the Ghana Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) under the theme, Internet Security and the National Effort. It was attended by about 50 people from ISOC members, government, civil society, industry and academia.

Reiterating the importance of protecting our critical infrastructure, Mr. Daniel Asante, coordinator of the Ghana Computer Emergency Response Team (ghCERT) informed the gathering that ghCERT was partnering with government agencies, ghNOG, ISOC Ghana, GhNIC and other organisations to create awareness on Internet security issues and how some of the incidences can be prevented.  He however, said that because of the pervasive nature of the Internet, it was difficult to track down on the perpetrators and that everyone was obligated to protect the Internet against anti-social acts.

An interesting question that came up for discussion was how much security was needed to prevent the cyber crime.  While one school was of the thought that security was extremely necessary and that policies should be put in place to curb cyber crime, another was of the opinion that, the more security, the less friendly the Internet becomes, since the Internet is a network of networks and used by a large number of people.

Adding on to the debate, Prof. Quaynor said that technology keeps changing very rapidly and policies very quickly become obsolete.  Moreover, policies on Internet usage are done globally with the involvement of organisations such as, the IETF, ISOC, IGF, ITU, ICANN etc, and these normally take time before they are implemented.   He said, rather than preventing the occurrences, the role of ghCERT is to respond to problems as and when they occur.  Prof. Quaynor stressed on the importance of sharing of best practices among IT operators on a regularly, so that they are abreast of the issues.

Presenting the topic, Mitigating the ‘Sakawa’ Challenge, Mr. Charles Nelson, of Youth Against Cyber Crime, described himself as ‘a lone ranger’ in the war against Sakawa. He described the phenomena as endemic and that the future was bleak if the government does not take measures to nip the crime in the bud.  Of great concern to Mr. Nelson, however is the erroneous perception among people that young people who use Internet are all engaged in the Sakawa business.   “There must be a reorientation of the minds of the youth that the Internet goes beyond Sakawa.” He said.   “Advocacy is therefore, the key to change the mindset of these young people.

As the Internet continues to grow, there is a need for global computer emergency response teams to curb the incidences of cyber crime.  The Ghana project is therefore, a laudable initiative. According to Prof Quaynor, there is the need to create network of government ministries agencies and departments to come out with a defence strategy. He made this call when Mr.  Godfred Ofori-Som, Chair, Technical Committee, ISOC, Ghana, Ayittey Bulley, Vodafone, Ghana, Daniel Asante and Charles Nelson, constituted a panel to discuss the way forward in forging a strong computer emergency response team.  Mr. Asante, said that currently ghCERT was operating on funds from benefactors and voluntary contributions and that there was the need to look for other funding alternatives. Dr. Quaynor called on ghCERT to form strong ties with the government and tackle the issues from a multi-stakeholder approach.   Mr. Asante made a call for volunteers to join in the crusade to make the Internet a safer place.  He said GhCERT was putting a portal in place where it would disseminate information via listservs.

He also called for volunteers to team up with ghCERT to create awareness of the initiative.   Four other CERTS in Africa can be found in Tunisia, South Africa, Mauritius and Egypt.

The evening was climaxed with the launching of the new ISOC website, which has current Web 2 features, user generation content, with face book and twitter integrations. The launch was performed by Prof. Quaynor, Board Chairman of ISOC Ghana.

About Internet Society Ghana Chapter

The Internet Society Ghana Chapter (ISOC-Ghana) is a not-for-profit organization and official Chapter of the Internet Society.  The mission of ISOC –Ghana is to inform the private and public community of Internet users, on recent developments in Internet technologies and their impact on today’s global society.

Contact:

Vera Doku
Communication Chair

ISOC Ghana

[E] : Vera.doku@gmail.com

[M]: +233-244627994

Hon Haruna Iddrisu

Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications, on Monday said the government was considering establishing an Information Communication Technology (ICT) Park in Cape Coast and a National Data Centre in the northern part of the country.

“We have put in all the enabling legislations to ensure that the projects are well established to serve the Information Communication and Technology (ICT) needs throughout the country,” he said.

Mr. Iddrisu was speaking in Addis Ababa after holding bilateral discussions with Tarek Kamel, the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology, on areas of cooperation and development.

He said although telephone penetration in Ghana had risen to about 67 per cent representing about 12 million Ghanaians, there was still the need to put in place adequate measures in the other sectors of communication and appealed to the Egyptian government for support in that respect.

The Communication Minister appealed to the Egyptian government to consider training more Ghanaians in their National ICT Institute which is recognised world-wide.

Mr. Kamel gave the assurance that Egypt would source funds for the establishment of the two projects in Ghana as soon as he returned to Egypt, but appealed to Mr. Iddrisu to feed him with a comprehensive plan of both projects.

He also promised to support Ghana in her fight against cyber crime (Sakawa) emphasising that modern communication was meant for socio-economic development and not for the satisfaction of the selfish.

The Egyptian Communications Minister said they would support Ghanaian public and private entrepreneurs to make the country the telecommunication hub of the West African sub-Region.

Mr. Iddrisu, who also held similar discussions with Ms. Chaloet Makoena of South Africa Telekom, said Ghana was ready to partner a country like South Africa to make Broadband accessible to all and sundry in the country.

Ms. Makoena said South Africa was ready to support Ghana to achieve her aim of becoming a communication giant in the West African sub-Region.

Source: GNA

Ghana’s regulator NCA is consulting on offering spectrum and a licence that will allow those who win them to offer both voice and data. But as you might imagine there’s a number of catches contained in the package. Russell Southwood looks at what’s on offer.

NCA says that it wants to award a total of five spectrum licences for BWA services in the 2,500 MHz-2,690 MHz band. There will be three slots of 30 MHz blocks nationwide for operators using unpaired spectrum and two slots of 2 x 15 MHz blocks for operators using paired spectrum.

Both licences will run for ten years. In addition, there will be an extra paired 2 x 5 MHz and an extra unpaired 15 MHz available to the winners of the five licences. Obviously the spectrum could suit a number of technologies but the most likely is WiMAX.

What is ground-breaking about the licence is that “end users shall be allowed to use their equipment in fixed locations, in a nomadic manner or with a full mobile capability, at their choice.” Furthermore, these licensees do not require to have a separate Internet user licence. The licence also covers the whole of the country.

There’s a non-refundable application fee of US$100,000 with the winning of the five licences being determined through an auction. The minimum reserve price for the auction is US$5 million.

However, the licences is hedged about with conditions. The successful operators have to achieve 60% penetration of each of a set of zones and 100% penetration of district capitals. The zones are groupings of district areas from the highly attractive (Accra Metropolitan) to the much less attractive (Bole in the Northern region). In addition, the operator has to satisfy a set of quality of service metrics that will be outlined in the licence.

So five years later, half way into their licence period,  if they have satisfied all these conditions, luck operators will then be able to pay a one-time fee of US$1 million and be able to offer voice services. However, the licence does not entitle the operator to an international gateway licence and that will have to be purchased separately.

So the licence structure is an attempt to get the maximum investment whilst offering a carrot that would be a bargain at US$1 million if you can reach the finish line in five years. The only realistic bidders will either be existing mobile operators wanting to put data traffic on to WiMAX or an insurgent wireless challenger with deep pockets.

A recent case in Ghana shows why there needs to be an alternative network to Vodafone Ghana’s wholesale operation, the National Communications Backbone Company NCBC). The Ministry of Communications issued a tender for the eGhana project which required 10 mbps to be delivered to various parts of the country. One of the country’s ISPs Internet Ghana, on the basis of the prices it was charged by NCBC made a bid of US$8,000 per E1, on the basis of being charged US$4,500 per E1 by NCBC.

It emerged that NCBC had quoted a price that equated to US$1,083.33, clearly well below the sum it charged for wholesale bandwidth to other companies. After a number of unconvincing explanations, it said had made a mistake and would still offer the bandwidth in order to keep its commitment. The case is currently with NCA and in the courts.

Interestingly, the incumbent’s new owners Vodafone have put in place a capacity-related charging structure for wholesale bandwidth so that you get the same price anywhere in the country. Unless you happen to be the company broadband subsidiary and then it looks very like you get a much better deal. Mistakes do happen but a mistake of this magnitude needs a different explanation.

Source: balancingact-africa.com

A fibre optic cable that will deliver high speed, reliable and cheaper Internet and telecommunication services in Ghana reached the Osu Beach in Accra Tuesday.

The 9,800 kilometre cable, which will link Ghana to the rest of Africa, Europe and America, has been laid under the sea from Lagos to Accra.

Globacom contracted Alcatel-Lucent of France to fix the fibre optic cable which will carry data and Internet traffic within Ghana, West Africa and the rest of the world. Ghana thus becomes the third country, after Nigeria and Benin, to have the under-sea fibre optic cable.

Globacom has already fixed the cable in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

The optic cable was fixed by a technical crew on board a vessel.

The Minister of Communications, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Globacom, Mr Paddy Adenuga; the Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Mr Bernard Forson, the General Manager of Alcatel-Lucent, Mr Marco Rebbechi, and the Project Director of Alcatel-Lucent, Mr Mitesh Chauhan, were at the Osu Beach to witness the arrival of the cable.

Alcatel-Lucent used the occasion to formally hand over the cable to Globacom.

Mr Adenuga said the submarine cable would provide cost-effective voice, data, video and e-commerce services across Africa, Europe and the rest of the world.

He said the submarine cable, the first to be established by a single company, would provide crystal clear voice calls and high speed data and Internet transmis-sion services.

He said the unique feature of the submarine cable was its ability to connect Ghana directly to the United Kingdom and further to the United States, the two major data hubs of the world.

Mr Adenuga said it was cheaper to operate the submarine cable and that would automatically bring down the rates of telecommunications services, besides its reliability.

According to the Glo I Project Manager, Mr Kayode Adebiyi, the cable offered 99.9 per cent up time reliability, world-class, long distance voice, video and data communication services to the African customer.

He mentioned on-line diagnosis of ailments, video conferencing, distance learning, reliable data, voice and video connectivity and e-banking as some of the facilities that could be provided by the cable.

Mr Iddrisu said the laying of the cable in Accra marked a milestone in the telecommunications landscape of Ghana “in our quest to improve upon the delivery of improved communications infrastructure and services to enhance efficient and affordable data services and management”.

He said in line with the government’s commitment to increase broadband uptake and penetration in the country, his ministry gave policy directives to the NCA to promote investment in telecommunication facilities, including fibre optic-based network transmission and submarine cable landing ser-’ vices.

“The landing of Glo 1 submarine cable in Ghana along the west coast of Africa is a positive manifestation of an environment that is open, competitive and conducive for fruitful investment as made by Glo Mobile Ghana Limited,” he said.

Mr lddrisu commended Globacom for taking advantage of the healthy investment climate in Ghana to invest in ICT infrastructure which would facilitate the expansion of market opportunities for broadband service providers and thereby help reduce transaction cost for broadband services.

He said currently fibre optic capacity in Ghana was 120 gigabytes per second and indicated that with the emergence of the submarine cable the capacity would increase to 640 gigabytes per second and an ultimate capacity of 2,5 terabytes per second, “thus increasing up time reliability to 99.9 per cent”.

Mr Forson described the arrival of the cable to Ghana as a positive development in the country’s telecommunication industry.

Source: Daily Graphic

It is informed for the benefit of the Internet Community in the country that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer, computer scientist and MIT professor credited with the inventing the World Wide Web, would be arriving in Ghana this weekend as part of a four-nation African tour.

The Kofi Annan ICT Center (KACE) will host the renowned Professor at 2:00pm on Monday 21st September, 2009 with many experts from the Internet Community in Ghana.

The statement indicated that it will be happy to see members of the Internet fraternity come to the KACE to share knowledge on W3C and other matters of common interest.
Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee

The wikipedia describes him as follows;

He is a British engineer and computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet. In 2007, he was ranked Joint First, alongside Albert Hofmann, in The Telegraph’s list of 100 greatest living geniuses. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).