News

NCC Stops MTN from Acquiring Visafone

Published

8 months ago

June 28, 2018

Whale

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on Monday stopped moves by Africa’s largest telecom service provider, MTN Group, to acquire the only surviving Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operator, Visafone.

In 2016, the MTN Group had announced its acquisition of Visafone Communications Limited following the signing of a deal by both companies.

The main reason for the sudden acquisition halt was revealed by NCC, that the acquisition cannot be done without a public inquiry for stakeholders to determine the future of Visafone in the overall interest of the company.

The NCC statement was argued by the major telecom operators in Nigeria (MTN, 9mobile, Glo and Airtel) and other operators in the stakeholders meeting in NCC headquarter in Abuja.

Speaking at a stakeholders meeting at the NCC headquarters on Monday in Abuja, the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, said the public inquiry is important in order for the stakeholders to make informed decision on the matter.

According to him, NCC under the law can take decision on the transfer of license and resources, including the 800MHz Spectrum from Visafone Communications Limited to MTN Nigeria Communications Limited.

“In order to reap the benefits of effective utilization of spectrum as well as improve operational efficiency and regulatory excellence, the Commission in accordance with its mandate as enshrined in the Nigerian Communications Act NCA 2003 embarked on re-planning of some of its Frequency bands,” he said.
Meanwhile, the representatives of Airtel and 9mobile in the country opposed the plan to transfer the license of Visafone to MTN, insisting that such move could create a monopoly for MTN in the industry while a lot of telecommunications companies could be permanently disadvantaged.

So, what do you think about this, is it ok for NCC to handover the full license and resources of Visafone to MTN alone? or other telecoms companies should be part

LG

While we’re still waiting for 5G, LG Opens A 6G Research centre

Published

3 weeks ago

January 30, 2019

Whale

While 5G technology is yet to be adopted across the world, LG has already started making preparations for 6G technology. LG hasn’t been doing quite well in the mobile segment, although we saw a few smartphones from the company last year, perhaps this movement towards 6G technology might help revive her drowning mobile market.

The company just announced the opening of a dedicated 6G research centre to ‘lead in next-generation mobile telecommunications, located in the Yuseong District of Daejeon, South Korea.

According to the company, it will use the institute’s personnel and infrastructure to preemptively secure technology for 6G.

The company further said: “We want to secure core technologies for sixth generation wireless network ahead of time,”.

The transition from 5G to 6G will take up to 10 years, the company said but it wants to “prepare for the future industry”.

News

This Tor-enabled SIM Card Will Keep You Anonymous On Mobile Networks

Published

4 months ago

November 5, 2018

4ti5ied

Total Online privacy is something many are wanting but only close to none are getting, this will be changing as a UK company will be launching a Tor-enabled sim card soon.

Tor-enabled SIM Card is coming 2019

Until now, total online privacy has only been available for web surfing and it either requires an installation of a third party software, paying for a VPN(Virtual Private Network) or doing a series of configuration. After doing all this complete privacy is expected but not gotten because ISP and VPN providers still manage to put users under surveillance and invade privacies.

This is issue prompt Brass Horn, a UK based company to design a Tor-enabled sim card, Tor on its own is one of the ways to stay anonymous online and to access onion websites popularly known as dark-web. This Tor-enabled sim card requires no configurations to use reason been all configuration has been hard-coded into it, although the user still as to create an access point.

The Founder of Brass Horn, Llewellyn told Motherboard that is organization is “about sticking a middle finger up to mobile filtering, mass surveillance.” meaning his organization will be blessing UK residence with a close to perfect online privacy including anonymously facebook, twitter and several other social media that seems impossible to stay anonymous on.

Llewellyn will also be putting effort into building more nodes to improve Tor’s anonymity and also increasing its speed which is annoyingly slow irrespective on the ISP. This Tor-enabled sim card will also be providing protection to users should in case the user connect to Wi-Fi and also if users private IP was leaked, it will ensure it traces back to neither the user nor Brass Horn has its ISP, a beta test of this sim-card has already been released and it only available to Android users.

It was said that when the alpha version of this Tor-enabled sim card is released, it will have Orbot an android version of the Tor browser. It was also said that this sim-card will be costing 2.0GBP per month and 0.025 per megabyte transferred over the network and payment method will be via credit cards or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monero, or Zcash.