Meet the New Boss: Connectivity

Kenya, and East Africa as a whole, has been cabled; this means more people have access to the Internet than before. Just like food, water and shelter, accessible (mobile) data can be added to the list of Kenyans’ basic needs. 

This may seem the ultimate hyperbole in a country facing constant crop and water shortages among its most vulnerable populations but, ultimately, the demand for data is comparable to that of other basic needs, as more people in different regions hunger for connectivity to access different services.  Services that, when all is said and done, will have helped connect people to these basic needs. Affordable devices are key to this connectivity.

A recent study done by Mfarm on the use of mobile phones by Kenyan farmers to access information on crop prices demonstrates the potential for rural farmers to carry out research on better farming practices from basic mobile devices.  According to the study, farmers are able to use data accessed via mobile devices to find out market prices for their crops. Thanks to the different vendors and mobile operators that have embedded these devices with 2G capabilities, and the increase of affordable devices, Kenyan farmers are in a position to better penetrate the agricultural market by understanding the market as it pertains to their crops.

WordCamp Kenya 2012, Maanzoni Lodge, "Responsible blogging and positive social media influence"

Previously, the main obstacle to access was infrastructure. But, in the past 5 years, the Government of Kenya and various other stakeholders have helped to connect the country by establishing extensive cabling systems.  Additionally, the Ministry of Information and Communication has mandated different projects to ensure more people benefit from this capacity as much as possible.

The “Pasha Centers” are one such project, where different entrepreneurs from various Kenyan constituencies were funded to start ICT Kiosks at their village levels. These Kiosks provide technology services at the grass roots to foster the growth of a knowledge economy in rural areas. Urban centers are no longer the sole focus of Kenya’s ICT industry. Pasha Centers are equipped with affordable laptops for browsing, which are easier for entrepreneurs to purchase and maintain.

Students have also played a major role in ensuring that Internet capacity is utilized.  Affordable devices and increased connectivity have launched an assault on Kenya’s class boundaries, as more students are able to take advantage of virtual platforms.  The ICT board and device manufacturers have contributed significantly by subsidizing the price of laptops to ensure each student has access to the digital world.    

Why is any of this important to Kenya? The answer is multidimensional, and we could spend countless hours debating it but, ultimately, what matters most is that the playing field has been leveled. Small business owners have more access to cheaper equipment that connects people of all socio-economic classes to information formerly only accessibly by the elite. 

The gap between the elite urban and the poorer rural communities is being bridged both in terms of information awareness/access and business opportunities. It is easier to access data that can be used to penetrate markets. It is easier to learn virtually. The ease of access provided by affordable devices will definitely help Kenyans wade through the muck of classism, elitism, and wealth disparity that has got us stuck.

Dr. Mark Dean, he invented IBM's 1st PC

As IBMers induce there trainings in Africa, mainly to invest on the skills set and high education, one specific gentleman is honored to be part of this education initiative whom I think deserves international acclaim and recognition like the Olympic folks. 

Meet Dr. Mark Dean, he is part of the IBM team that flames the African market with a new company specific education outfit to nurture skill set.

Before you end up being optimistic, whining and trolling about what your PC can’t do think about how life would be with the type writer and the manual ledger book entries. Right, I guessed so, I had a chance to catch up with Dr. Dean during one of his business trips in Kenya; he says together with other IBMers, they developed predecessors to the IBM PC.

In those days, Dr. Dean terms the feeling of building systems to be as passionate as ever.

Not only is he the ambassador of spearheading IBM’s skill set development in Africa but he built a work station for his master’s thesis during his studies in Florida. This became one of his systems, that jump started the development of the bus which currently is known as ISO bus.

The ISO bus is the interface that allows one to connect types of devices together for the PC, for instance the modems, printers, keyboards and mice, all the stuff that are plugged in and attached to the PC.

This all happened because the development team just didn’t know any better, they thought they were building this for some fun. At that time IBM aimed at selling 200,000 machines in total but the company ended up selling a billion PCs in a year. Dr. Dean says little did they know that they invented a tool that will help people change the way they work.

The PC become a famous tool, it helped people get things done, it replaced the type writer, people don’t need to do ledgers anymore, basically it solved a lot of little problems and changed the way we do business.

Funny thing about it, Dr. Dean never thought he will live long enough to see something he invented being replaced by something else: the cellphone, technology is moving things rapidly.

Google celebrates the wildebeests

They don’t feel the cold, for they are not crossing anywhere in this city to endure the severe chilly mornings. It’s August and there is no doubt that the cold stops for breakfast in Nairobi, a month that thousands of wildebeests and zebra cross the open plains of Serengeti and the Mara.  

It is not only the crocodiles that celebrate this one cross of the Grumenti River, but Google does too. It honors this by featuring a migration doodle on its Kenyan homepage google.co.ke created by Samuel Githu, the first Kenyan guest artist to collaborate with them.

Samuel artistic piece is featured at a prime time, a time when the wildebeests and zebras migrate to greener pastures to fill their tummies as season changes. On the other hand, they patiently wait choking on their own saliva, the predators wait to strike and take advantage of this migration.

The doodle decorates the Google’s logo, over the years doodles have been used to match the company with specific events, anniversaries and science. Google homepage customization started in 1999 by Dennis Hwang, a 29 year old who referred to his artistic art as “doodles”.

The light pipes under our feet

In most corporations, people, communication and knowledge are few clicks away. Clients and service providers no longer have to be on the same location because of the availability of fiber optic. Fiber connections allowed vendors and clients to transmit data and enjoy instantaneous communication from different parts of the world.

Apparently, use of fiber emerged in 1980s, solving a major problem of signal degradation/loss experienced when working with copper to transfer data over networks.  Copper networks needed repeaters to boost their signals after a distance of 100m, approximately 320 feet. For instance it would be 4 - 8 times (copper 1000mbps, fiber 4 – 8gpbs) faster to back up data from a server to a SUN unit with fiber connectivity.

This means with the speed of 4 – 8gpbs, an equivalent of 25000 pictures or 25 hours of video will be backed up faster on a fiber based than copper network.

Now, everyone will agree we need a strand of one “light Pipe” to our houses or offices, I mean who doesn’t love high internet speeds, transmitting gigabytes of files in seconds or perhaps buffering online videos in a flash! If we really have this appetite for fiber then why don’t we fully utilize this capacity of data at our disposal? 

In January 2011, Rwanda completed work on its 2,300 km cable at a cost of $60 million, Korea Telecom laid the fiber. Tanzania is still working on their 10,000 km cable at a cost of approximately $170 million; Burundi on the other hand got a grant of $10.5 million to lay 1300km of cable. Uganda too acquired a Chinese loan of about $102 million to lay 2100 km long of cable.  Compared to the four countries, Kenya’s private sector has been on the fore front of laying fiber in the country, by June 2010, they had laid 5000km of cable; the government is also investing $60 million in a fiber cable of its own.

These five partners have invested in terrestrial fiber optic to build a large interconnected region on the continent. With all these cables do we have enormous data capacity to utilize them or local telecom companies just installed extra strands in metropolitan areas as a concern against future capacity shortages? Or did the private sector especially in Kenya invest too much to prepare for the much anticipated internet explosion which has led to the growth of dark fiber in the country that is not lit (industry jargon for operating).

What happens to the unlit strands! What if they become obsolete before we completely utilize them? Think about the much turbulence of technology, innovation of lasers that will definitely leap beyond the capabilities of already installed fibers. Let’s hope businesses will grow and more fiber capacity will be needed, at that time the unlit fiber will be used to sustain the next wave of growth.

Green electronics

The explosion of high tech laptops, notebooks, smartphones, tablets and other ‘toys’ is creating a worrying trend to the environment conservationists – electronic scrap or what is now being referred to as ‘e-waste’.

Newer, faster and more efficient gadgets are being introduced at a very fast pace. How long do you stay with your old device before catching up with new technology? Three years? Eight? Once you upgrade and get a newer device, how do you dispose of your old one?

Once thrown in the garbage, electronics are collected and trashed at dumpsites, where they are smashed, burned until everything that was once safely ensconced inside spills out and over the course of months, years, and decades, moves into the air, ground, and water.

For instance, in Accra children smash up old computers, tare them apart then burn them to reveal the wires inside. They would later sell these wires to metal buyers as copper. These children got sick, vomited and experienced headaches due to fumes from the burning wires. After which, ashes containing lead, a neurotoxin and cadmium which damages lungs and kidneys is littered on the ground and washed away to the ocean when it rains.

When a single cellphone lies around on the ground, is not a concern. But when billions of these are disposed, they tend to release large doses of chemicals (like Colton in cellphones) to the ground which becomes a health hazard. Critical health concerns such as cancer have been linked to this, for example premature aging and defected damaged genes caused by chemicals which altered DNA structure of workers in China.

In Kenya e-waste is piling up though not as much as in the US, due to the way old and unloved electronics are handled locally. For instance, institutions like “Computer for Schools Kenya” in collaboration with the city council of Nairobi started a plant to recycle old CRT monitors as a way of managing e-waste.

The number of cellphones and PCs that are trashed is overwhelming, mostly cellphones because Kenyan market is flooded with lots of Chinese models that are cheap and tossed once they get spoilt, same to PCs.

Initially before the world environmental laws from organizations like “Greenpeace international” stood firm to control e-waste, there existed unregulated trade in dumping electronics. This is when electronic corporations like Nokia, started making durable handsets that are free from brominated compounds, chlorinated flame retardants and antimony trioxide. Some of the other corporations include Samsung, Phillips, Apple, Sony among others.

Ultimately, Kenya begins to understand the dangers that come from hazardous materials which lay inside electronics. In 2010, Hewlett Packard made a move and established the HP East Africa Computer Recycling plant in Kenya. Located in Mombasa, this facility assesses IT waste for re-use and refurbish if appropriate. The long-term aim of the facility is to capture up to 20 per cent of IT e-waste in Kenya.

In Kenya, the National Environmental Management Association (NEMA) drafted laws in 2008 to guide against e-waste in the country. Since then, citizens have been patronized to have strong green principles towards e-waste from conferences and seminars organized by the body with support from the government.

In order to reduce e – waste in the country, a second solution calls for users to sell their used up but functioning electronics on online classified ad sites, or donate them to a responsible local charity or organization. Navtej Dhadialla, an Apple maniac from CIO East Africa, disposes his old gadgets by selling them off to local stores.

VSAT still a resource in Africa

The entry of fiber optic networks has led to shrinking of business in VSAT technology in Kenya. Fiber connectivity has increased internet speeds on traditional terrestrial networks to an extent of having an over capacity on the same.

High speed direct fiber to organizations has led them to invest less on VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) and concentrate more on the affordable terrestrial WAN links. VSAT has been initially used for remote weather forecasting, broadcasting etc. Well, today VSAT technology is still in business, their networks offer up to 99.4% uptime for major companies like airlines and banks.

Why organizations still depend on VSAT.

Realiabilty

Airports and the Kenya navy cannot fully relay on fiber and WIMAX connectivity due to their down time. Fiber connectivity has upto 84% of uptime; therefore it means at some point 16% of this connectivity will be down.  This latency is not allowed due to the nature of business run by these institutions.

VSAT networks are recommended for mission critical applications. When their links are down, it’s easy to troubleshoot the problem because of the nature of their laid infrastructure, the problem either lies on the sending station, the satellites or the receiving station. This compared to a fiber cut, which will take time to locate and replace the cables for the link to be up again. 

Back up to terrestial networks

Many banks in East Africa have branches in rural areas; these numerous branches connect to servers at their head offices. VSAT provides connectivity in sparsely populated rural areas where terrestrial networks like fiber are expensive to install due to the cabling involved and installation of many base stations (BTS).

In as much as banks use the terrestial networks, these lines cannot achieve 100% uptime. VSAT hence provides standby emergency back-up services. When the terrestial networks experience downtime, banks can purchase bandwith exclusively for backup then dynamically distribute them to branches experiencing a down time. VSAT provides bandwidth up to 2 mbps downlink and 512 kbps uplink high speed internet access for temporary emergency situations.

Security

Government mandate, states that its information should be carried on secure networks.

As part of Kenya’s technological evolution, the government has been working towards streamlining the voting system into a more efficient and effective electoral process. It was a successfully implementation of an electronic voter registration and voter tallying system, to cater to the Kenyan constitution referendum voting process. The system though was only on pilot stage in preparation for the 2012 general elections.

The Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) needed to implement a system that would rapidly, reliably and credibly transfer data from each polling station nation-wide, to their tallying centre. Satelite communication becomes a desirable way to send this information in future elections.

Satellites support encryption of all data transmitted between two sites or multiple sites, which make the creation of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) possible. VPNs use “virtual” secure networks that are connected through public networks (like the internet) to remote sites.  With this, VSAT networks find more acceptances in government and defense connectivity because anyone who incepts the data cannot decrypt it for malicious use.

Inter-operation with other terrestrial networks i.e. WIMAX, fiber networks

Through partnerships with local terrestrial service providers, VSAT service providers are getting stronger in comprehensive network provision and management.

They can offer, for example, MPLS networks in metro areas and VSAT networks in the rural areas for the same company – both of them can inter-operate with each other acting as a single network!

An example, Alldean Satellite Networks, a Kenyan satellite service provider offering both domestic and cross-border connectivity to virtually anywhere in Africa, they have done cellular backhaul projects for major telcos in the counrty.

VSAT in Africa

In Africa, organizations are still using VSAT networks to control their operations and other services. For example Alldean networks, a local VSAT provider offers its services to local banks, the government and they were behind the set up of communication links in one of the major airport in the country.

In addition, customers can now send money directly to the mobile “wallets” of Safaricom M-PESA subscribers in Kenya from 45 countries and territories. The expansion of the service to more than 80,000 locations worldwide is based on the VSAT network communication technology.

On the 4^th – 7^th of July, 2011, the “Broadcast, Interactive, Internet and Hybrid TV in Africa” conference will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa. As industry leaders from all over the world gather together to understand the latest innovations in TV, satellite remains the backbone and has a bigger foot print in TV broadcasts. This shows that the communication technology is still in business.

Why KNEC should look at their servers!

When the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) released the 2010 examination results late February this year, my kid brother spent lots of money trying to access his results from a cyber in town. The KNEC portal took time to load and display the results, Ian turned to sending an SMS request on the same, in vain.

The council so far has done well by keeping abreast with technology solutions to deploy exam results via their website and the short message service. Despite this bright initiative by KNEC to increase efficiency in results collection by former candidates, their systems fail when a number of requests are sent to the servers at that specific time.

This however is not the first time former candidates experience this problem, it has been an issue over the years since KNEC implemented this response system. Let us have a look as to why this happens and possible solutions that can be implemented to address the problem.

Server optimization

KNEC provides examination results in two major ways, i.e. either students access them on their website or send request messages to their servers.  Well, SMS becomes the better option because of accessibility to internet facilities might be hard in some parts of the country. Though, this becomes a tricky affair, why! Because service providers only lease bandwidth for SMS transmission, they are not really involved with how the servers synchronize these lines of passage.  

Therefore the SMS system does not carry the blame as much other than proper management of this traffic which mainly involves having sufficient bandwidth to do so.

The real issue here again lies on their servers; KNEC should conduct a proper optimization of their database systems for these new result outlets to work efficiently.

Scalable shared hosts

Take an example of Amazon S3 and Media Temple VPS server facilities. These two have ability to serve replies to thousands of result requests simultaneously hence without any delays.

As everything boils down to the KNEC servers, I believe they are on a shared host that is not scalable under heavy load. My take, the council should operate scalable servers which have virtual storage spaces where by when new data is moved on the private servers, it replaces the old data which then can be stored in web based support hosted on local servers.

Sensible dedicated virtual servers

A clear picture on the fundamentals of this issue; All the other modules of the KNEC website excluding the examination results database occupies a few megabytes, lets says 30MB on the higher level.

A MySQL database with 360,000 records, a rough estimate of candidates who sit for KCSE examination each year gets to occupy around 30GB of the storage system.

When we compared KNEC servers with what MediaTemple as an example, http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/dv/ are offering as a dedicated virtual server is imaginable. Not only is it efficient but the capacity is enormous too. For USD 150 per month the council gets 100 GB of hard disk space, which in this case it can hold 30 years of student’s records inclusive of other modules of the website.

Narrowing down to the random memory (RAM) capacity needed, MediaTemple offers 2GB RAM for this package, and considering a complex web script only operates comfortably with 4MB of RAM capacity.

KNEC claims that the problem lies with heavy SMS traffic experienced during core times when they release results. According to our analysis, this problem is accounted to a bracket of issues, not only the clogged traffic but also server optimization problems. Relating back to my example as they claim; MediaTemple package includes 2TB (Terebyte) of bandwidth capacity to carry SMS while each SMS request needs only a KB of the bandwidth.

When it comes to cost it’s a whole point all together, let’s do the math; the cost of hosting this service at MediaTemple is USD 150 a month, when we convert to Kenyan Shillings it means out of the 360,000 possible text request, 12000 requests covers the cost of hosting KNEC services in these efficient servers. This is when the council charges KSH 10 for every SMS exam result request send by a former student.