Long-term followers of MobilityNigeria.com know that I am a function-over-form person. I purchase my devices strictly for their practical functionality and for the thrill I get out of using them. However, that may change…

Before you scream, “Traitor!“, hear me out; okay?

The Public Relations man at Alireta swears by the gods of the corporate world that I need to start thinking more like a corporate person and less like a geek. In plain english, he says that as M.D. of a company like Alireta, a core consideration of mine should be having and carrying around a phone that makes a statement.

Aaargh! I can see how that will cramp my style a bit.

If you know the corporate world a bit (at least here in Nigeria), you can attest that the favourites in that environment are Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Yes; you’ll find some E90s here and there, but by and large the Nigerian corporate environment is powered by Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

I remember that both my wife and my PR officer kicked against my replacing the E90 with the G1 on the grounds that the E90 would be more impressive and make a better statement when I went for meetings. Note that I have known these two individuals intimately for several years and they are NOT vain people.

According to my PR man, the rest of the corporate gang think that there is something wrong with you if you don’t carry one of those things they carry around. Worse, they think you are a “small boy” and may generally not pay you much attention.

At first, I went “No way!”, but I am giving it some thought.

Personally now, I am asking, Can I use a Blackberry? Not sure. As for Windows Mobile, yes; there are WinMo devices I am more than certain that I would love to use.

I am sure that I do not like this corporate game of trying to impress people, but that’s how it is played. Whether I like it or not, I’m smack in the middle of it. For sure, it is neither immoral nor illegal, so perhaps I can play a bit too.

Alternatively, I could resign as CEO of Alireta and keep using whatever catches my fancy regardless of what anyone thinks! So there. Just in case you catch me with a Blackberry… it wasn’t me!!

This is a guest post by Kolu Ajofaa. It illustrates the ordeals that the average Nigerian subscriber suffers at the hands of mobile service providers, be they on GSM or CDMA platforms. It is sad, outrageous, as well as hilarious.

It is being published unedited. What you read below is what was posted.

Sorry, if this post is excessively long, but I really want to get this off my chest for the edification of anyone who does not know what they can be getting into in Nigerian Mobile Internet.

What the [*Bleep!*] is going on with phone internet services in Nigeria? Is this typical of Black Africa only? I paid through the nose to get internet from a *wannabe sledge-hammer* phone service. I will even mention their name! It was O-NET, okay? I bought the fixed wireless terminal thingy by HUWEI. They told me (well, the one guy I dealt with, anyway) that this was the best deal.

I asked the guy: How do I configure my computer, then? Don’t I get, you know, a MANUAL?

He looked at me like he was advertizing *CLOSE-UP.* Oh NO. *I* couldn’t *POSSIBLY* configure the internet settings by *MYSELF!* Only the superior intellect of the Arcane Brotherhood Mumbo de Jumbo could possibly handle the awesome task of configuring a computer system to the internet. I should have to take the computer system to… [*Drum Roll!*] *(echo=on) THE GROTTO OF CON-FIGURE-NATION-N-N-N (echo=off)!*

This was at a place about three miles from where we were. It was situated inside one of those terrible, horrible places where supposedly equal people store and remove money. 1% of its patrons own 99% of the money stored there and never give you any, while 99% of the patrons share 1% of the money. This thing is jokingly called a “bank.” I never get banks. Why do they readily lend money to the people who don’t need it, and virtually deny it totally to those who do?

What I mean is, that when I was told that the configuration of my computer system had to be done inside a “bank,” I already knew that this was so not gonna end well! My then computer system weighed almost as much as I did. I just wanted to go online- I didn’t want a hernia!

Couldn’t he just GIVE me the settings? (The [*Bleep!*] could at the very least have LOOKED like he was CONSIDERING saying “YES.”) His reply was basically: Couldn’t I just give him the [*Bleep!*]ing money- was I buying, or what?

I handed over the money.

After considering logistics, checking my medical history, and such, I went and did something I was in no hurry whatsoever to do: I bought my first laptop. I considered this an unnecessary extravagance, because for one laptop (new or *Tokunbo*), you can get like three desktop or two tower computers of the same power. I loaded it up and took it to the “bank,” about a week after I paid for the so-called “Internet Account.”

The first shocker was, I was informed that my account would be counted FROM THE DAY I PAID, not from the day they STARTED the account. My reply, (leaving out all the unnecessary bits) was that I was the first guy in my department buying into this here gig, so if they [*Bleep!*]ed me over, GOOD LUCK suckering other co-workers of mine into subscribing. That had like the same effect on them as a duck has on a Police jeep that ran it over. A prerequisite of certain business concerns is that underling hired hands must not exceed the minimum level of intelligence required to be able to not understand serious threats.

Shocker number two was that no only did I have to hand my laptop- now the most expensive single item I owned- to them, but I had to watch as they- all three of them- failed to insert the USB device. There was this *bimbo* (in Nigeria, girls LIKE being called “Bimbo!” It gets worse, GUYS let themselves be called BIMBO- and stand up straight, and lead perfectly happy lives! If I had been named “Bimbo,” I would never have survived primary school!) who tried to FORCE the USB plug into the delicate port! Now I knew why they were doing this is a bank: If I started to strangle any one of them, the security guards would beat the [*Bleep!*] out of me. Why else would they have only one guy to take my money, and send me to three guys to “configure” my system?

Shocker Number Three: After 20 minutes (from the time it occurred to me to start to time this) the fellow acknowledged that he was making no headway getting the laptop to automatically recognize the modem programme cd,and TOLD ME what was happening. This was such a stupendous concept, I almost could not believe that this was happening. This piece of [*Bleep!*] actually considered that *I* the *owner* might KNOW SOMETHING! I briefly replied that the probable reason for the laptop not automatically installing the modem programme was that I had already installed it. They were amazed.

HOW, the fellow asked incredulously, was I (a mere customer, with only 5 years of experience in handling computers) able to do THAT? I, uh, read the manual, I replied. I could see that he thought that that was a totally radical idea! So did his partners.

Now that that Mount Everest of deductive reasoning had been reduced to the molehill it was constructed out of by as many as two decades of carefully inculated Nigerian education, the configuration of my system could proceed. I determined that I was going to see for myself exactly why I could not do this myself at home. Right.

After about thirty minutes, and several phone calls, presumably to have the operator enable something (when I had installed everything the foreign-made manual said, I called the operator, over the weekend, and asked what to do next. The operator said, “We don’t give out that information.”) he admitted that HE COULD NOT CONFIGURE MY LAPTOP TO THE INTERNET.

“It’s the Dialogue Box,” he complained. “It is not giving the proper dialogue. If you were using Windows 2000- or XP…” “XP? What? NEVER!” I swore. (At that time, I scrupolously avoided having anything to do with the newfangled and suspicious Windows XP. Just as I avoid having anything to do with Widows VISTA today. Long story. To be brief: the first version of Windows ANYTHING is ALWAYS [*Bleep!*].)

“Whatever sort of Operating System I am using should not matter,” I told him. “Just because I am using Windows Millenium Edition cannot mean that the system cannot access the internet.”

“I have configured systems,” he said with dignity, (Someone trying to talk down to you, who is shorter than you, is always funny. Unless he is holding either a gun, or a crucial part of your anatomy. He had neither.) “using Windows VISTA, XP, 2000, 98 and 95 (at which point I knew he was lying). I have never had to deal with Windows Millennium before! No one has ever brought such a system in here before!”

I was really tired, This would have been shocker Number Five, but I was becoming used to the situation. He insisted that I had to install Windows XP on my plainly labelled, “Made for Windows 98? Pentium II. I was not even sure that that was possible. I told him that I did not intend to leave without the configuration data, so I could install it on my desktops at home and in the office (I was the first to bring a computer to our department. We were not wired for Internet in those days, and every man did as it seemed right in his eyes.)

Shocker Number Six arrived and was duly felt.
The configuration data that O’NET “does not give out” to mere customers who paid over N10,000 for their junk internet consisted of THIS:

DIAL-UP Phone Number: #777#

USERNAME: Your full O-Net PHONE NUMBER.

PASSWORD: Your O-Net phone number, MINUS the “036? prefix.

THAT WAS ALL YOU NEEDED to finish the configuration. Their so-called engineer could have given that to me THE FIRST MINUTE, instead I had to endure an hour of torture, at the hands of morons whose IQs were the girl’s bra size. In inches.

I was later to learn that this sort of account is the norm in, say, America, and the configuration data is common knowledge. (Username = e-mail address; Password = ISP [E-mail address minus eververything before the @ and the @ itself].)

WHY SHOULD OUR PEOPLE HERE WANT TO FEEL LIKE SOME SORT OF *BIG-SHOTS* FOR KNOWING *SACRED-SECRET KNOWLEDGE,* WHEN SIMPLE FACTS SHOULD BE COMMON KNOWLEDGE? Even when the phone service providers have free browsing available, WHY WOULDN’T THEY TELL US? If it were some sort of “security loophole” that we shouldn’t be using, WHY CAN’T THEY CLOSE IT for once and for all? somebody knows important data, either way, and is not telling those who need to know!

The going rate for enabling Free Browsing in Nigeria right now is N5,000. WHY?

Just because the majority of people who can even afford the equipment (GPRS phone) are IGNORANT- no one ever told them Good Stuff, and they don’t know where to go to find it.

(It is basic African Culture to be AFRAID of important knowledge, because knowledge has traditionally been married to sorcery, witchcraft and demonism. If you learned stuff your *Don Juan* sorceror mentor didn’t personally spoon-feed to you, you could get messed up by some spirit being he didn’t control. A LOT of our people are brought up NOT to even WANT to learn. If you ask a Nigerian student why they don’t know stuff, the typical answer is, said in an apathetic whining tone:”WE WERE NOT TAUGHT!”)

Creating bottle-necks of essential information is a prerequisite to unfair exploitation and strangulation to literal death by oppressors. It will be the death of us all.

When O-Net actually charged me for the week before my account was enabled, AS THEY HAD SAID THEY WOULD, I declined to renew it. I found it slow compared to our university-provided internet- which cost a fraction of what they charged. Only one other person in my department ever subscribed to them- and he had done so before me. I routinely download files over 10MB in size (comics and books), and a download speed that drops to less than 5kb/sec, never mind less than 50kb/sec is a big joke.

The service providers CANNOT COMPLAIN that, “Oh, there’re just TOO MANY of you clients! We cannot supply you all at speed!” That is a stupid idea and reasoning that is used in ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY, in WATER SUPPLY, CONSTRUCTION OF ROADS, and the quality of education and employment in our country!

If you don’t know how to manage a business PROPERLY, you GET OUT, and make way for someone who does! But not in Nigeria! When people in chargwe don’t know what they are doing, and screw up the systems, they don’t get OUT- they get RAISES! Imagine if you went to some nice little restaurant, and paid expensively for an excellent meal. You are one of, say, 100 customers per day. Then, when some new corporation or something sts up in town, the clientele goes up to 10,000 customers per day. Why should that affect the size or the quality of your meals? How can you be made to pay the same amount for a meal that is 1% the size you have come to believe is “standard,” because, the manager says, “The resources are limited, and we must make the same amount go to all the customers. (You don’t want to cheat the other customers, do you? ARE you a CHEAT?)” *ye olde Jedi Mind-Trick* is used to make us feel bad, for demanded the goods and services that we paid for.

How can we be told that the quality and volume of what we pay for must DECREASE, because the number of suck- uh, CLIENTS, the same service is sold to has increased, WHILE WHAT WE PAY DOES NOT DECREASE? Is there any other country whose people are as easily duped as we are, or is it just us?

- Kolu Ajofaa

I have been an evangelist of mobility for years, touting and practising the benefits of staying connected anytime, anywhere.

However, I am regularly reminded of the disadvantages of being mobile.

The greatest problems with mobile tend to hover around non-personal contacts who want your time, anytime, even when it is inconvenient for you. For example, I have had people call me at 11 p.m. for something that could easilly have been dealt with during the day. If you are a public figure or popular person, this can easilly develop into a spin.

Being mobile can rob you of your precious private time, rob you of intimacy with family and friends, and rob you of your much needed rest. In other words, your mobile can rob you of a life (if you have one, that is).

Here are a few tips to keep yourself from being enslaved to your mobile:

1. As a rule, do not give your personal, private mobile number to clients and customers. You are likely to regret giving it to them at some point in time. Give them the office number instead and insist that your mobile line is for private use. Alternatively, have a second line that you give out for those not in your private life and give that out instead.
2. Use Caller ID. If you get a call from a number not on your personal contacts list in the early and/or late hours of the day, refuse to take the call.
3. If you have an official mobile line, switch it off (or put it on Silent) when on holidays, during early and late hours, and on weekends
4. Where necesarry and possible, insist on email. The great thing about email is that it is less intrusive. You can manage your mails in accordance with their priority levels. In a world where everyone wants your attention and want it now, this is a great communications channel. Email lets you deal with what is really important now and less important things as your schedule permits.
5. Even if you have email on your phone, remember when that new email alert sounds that you do not have to jump to attend to it now – except of course your job has to do with national security!

Someone has rightly said that the really great thing about phones is that if you leave them alone, they eventually stop ringing. I wholeheartedly agree.

Learn to leave your phone alone.

Zain Nigeria recently revamped their WAP/mobile portal, renaming it “Z-Zone”. The portal homepage is bright, catchy and well laid out. With a black background and colourful button links, Z-Zone is a looker.

The homepage sports links to Hot Picks, Religious, Ringtones, News & Sports, Games, Wallpapers & Animations, Videos, Feedback and more.

So far as I can tell, everything available on the Z-Zone portal is commercial. That means you have to pay to access them. The fees are deducted from your airtime, which is brilliant and straightforward. After selecting the specific content you want, there’s the option to accept to be billed. Once you click “I accept”, the fee is deducted from your balance and your download or item is presented.

There is nothing complicated about Z-Zone, and the purchasing mechanism is straightforward once you have chosen to part with your money.

There is however one aspect that is a bit annoying – the navigation. Here’s a scenario: if you want to read a news item, it takes 5 (that’s five) clicks one homepage to get to the page where you are presented with the info:

You are about to buy content from Zainfor the price of 20 NGN. Please click “I accept” to continue.

Depending ion what else you want, it may require more than those five steps.

Five steps is a bit too much, in my opinion. Perhaps Zain can re-work the navigation to accomodate sub-categories? For example, under News & Sports on the homepage can be an unordered list of sub-categories. That automatically reduces the steps from five to four.

If consistently implemented through the various menus, a subscriber shouldn’t have to click through more than three menus to get to most items.

Check out Z-Zone on your phone sometime at wap.ng.zain.com.

In the beginning, BlackBerry services on the Glo network were only for the bigger “bigger boys” – those who not only could shell out N100, 000 for a Blackberry device, but who also could afford a contract.

But time has a way of changing things. GloMobile now offers a prepaid option for its BlackBerry service, with a small range of bundle packages:

BIS Monthly costs N4, 800 and gives you 30 days validity with 10mb data inclusive. Send “bismonth” to 777 for activation.

BIS Weekly goes for N1, 500 with 7 days validity and 3mb data inclusive. To activate this, send “bisweek” to 777.

Lastly, BIS Daily goes for N400, 24 hours validity and 1mb data cap. Send “bisday” to 777 to activate.

Of course, you will need a BlackBerry device or BlackBerry-compatible smartphone.

GloMobile says that its BlackBerry service offers:

• configuration of up to 10 email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc)
• a new BlackBerry email address
• free BlackBerry Messenger
• pre-configured MMS and Glo WAP service

If you’ve been looking out for this, here’s your chance!

It is no longer news that the mobile web is here to stay. It is the buzz these days.

I do have a question: Do you know of any Nigerian individual or organisation who is actually making money from the mobile web in any way? Are you aware of any Nigerian mobile website that is actually generating some income (directly or indirectly) for its owner(s)? If you do, please tell us something about such a success story.

Contributions please.

The guys at All About Symbian went all out to pitch the browsers on a number of competing mobile phone platforms represented by the following devices:

1. N86
2. N97
3. iPhone 3G
4. T-Mobile G1

AAS concludes:

In general the Nokia devices with version 7.1 of the S60 browser out-performed the iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1. The iPhone and G1 had similar results (with the exception of guardian.co.uk), although the iPhone 3G just edges it.

Unbelievable? Certainly interesting. Nokia seems to have done a good job optimising the latest version of their browser. Shame the E75 missed it!

Head over to AAS for graphs, charts, and the whole report: Browser speed comparison – N86, N97, iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1 and more.

Comments!

234Next has reported that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced that it now has the capacity to render stolen phones useless on Nigerian mobile networks.

From the news report on 234Next’s website:

A statement from NCC on Sunday in Abuja said this was sequel to the launch of the national anti-mobile phone theft initiative by the commission in partnership with a private firm.

However, to benefit from the service, subscribers must first register their phones with their service providers and keep a record of their International Mobile Equipment
Identity (IMEI).

The Information and Communications Minister Dora Akunyili had at a recent public forum declared that about 2 million phones were reported stolen in the country daily.

“With the commencement of this initiative, any reported stolen phone would be barred from any of the mobile networks in the country, thereby making that handset useless within Nigeria.

“The GSM and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mobile operators have already signed to move their subscribers into the system with Zain Mobile already connected to the Netvisa (the private firm) anti-phone theft system,” the statement said.

“The menace of mobile phone theft has become a serious problem in the country and has not only inconvenienced many people but also endangered lives and businesses,” it added.

Full news item: NCC says it has technology to block stolen phones

Yesterday, a Saturday, was a hectic day for me. As the unofficial family driver (my wife drives too), it was my honourable task to haul us all around Lagos, from Ilupeju to Surulere to Gbagada to Omole. It looked like a promising day.

It also looked like a good opportunity to try out the popular mobile navigation application, Garmap for Mobile.

Did it deliver? Impressively! While I was familiar with most of the places we went to yesterday, that familiarity also helped evaluate how detailed and accurate Garmap is. Believe me when I say that Garmap provides accurate directions.

Even better, I observed that Garmap calculates the most direct routes possible, keeping you on major roads as much as possible. This way, it is difficult to get lost. If you make a wrong turn, Garmap re-calculates your route and gives you a fresh set of instructions to get you to your destination.

In addition, the voice guidance was so good that I had no need to look at the display of the phone. Garmap is so accurate that it gives directions to exit or enter service lanes on point! We had a taste of this a couple of times along Ikorodu road.

There was one location I didn’t have a good grasp of at Surulere, but Garmap proved effective, effortlessly piloting us through roundabouts and side streets. All I had to do was type in the street address and search. Garmap got us to our destination nicely.

My wife, who is not exactly a mobile phone person, is excited. She’s been telling everyone how wonderful this application is. As someone involved in marketing for her employers she thinks Garmap for Mobile is a must-have for those who are constantly on the move. I agree. Oh, and she’s already looking to replace her dumbphone with an S60 smartphone so she can use Garmap.

By the way, Alireta is giving away a free Garmap for Mobile application (full licence) if you purchase an S60 or Windows Mobile smartphone from them. Call 08084391076 if interested. Alireta Mobile is a delivery service and will deliver your order to your home or office same day or within 24 hours, depending on the time you place your order.

Finding points of interests works well too. Whether its a food outlet, fuel station, educational institution, or religious organisation, the application presents you with a list of such points near you – and that can include even those that are 500 km way from you.

If you need to find your way around Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria regularly, it is my informed opinion that you cannot go wrong with Garmap for Mobile.

It really has been a long time since I used Opera Mobile for anything, but I do remember that the browsing experience with version 9.5 on the Samsungs i780 and i900 was beautiful.

Perhaps that is why I am so unimpressed with what I saw of version 8.65 for Symbian when I tried it out yesterday. For the purpose of information, Opera Mobile 8.65 is the stable version available for most devices. The newer version on steroids, version 9.5, is presently available for only a small range of devices, specifically on the Windows Mobile platform (small wonder too, Pocket Explorer sucks big time!!).

Anyway, Opera Mobile 8.65 simply reminds me of the teething days of the mobile web. Virtually ALL formatting is lost when browsing websites on this browser – font and layout inclusive.

Here are a few screenshots:

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After the first browsing session, I shut down the application. On returning to play with it some more, it simply refused to launch. A re-installation did not help either. I remember this same thing happening when I tried out Opera Mobile 8.65 on another S60 device some time back. I am not sure what is behind this phenomenom. Anyone?

Zain now offers a monthly unlimited internet access plan for offices and homes. Called Zain Premium Plan, there is no monthly data cap on this service, similar to what CDMA networks like Starcomms offer. Finally, a GSM network steps up to the “unlimited” plate.

The package costs N15, 000 per month. all you have to do is load N15, 000 worth of airtime, and then dial *141*712*5# to activate the plan. Once activated, the subscriber has one month access to unlimited internet access.

Speed and performance depends on location, as Zain 3G is very limited at present. But outside of 3G coverage, subscribers will be able to browse via EDGE (180-240 kbps theoretical maximum speed), or GPRS (70 kbps theoretical maximum speed).

This is a good move by Zain. Now, if experience is anything to go by, we should expect the others to photocopy and join the unlimited bundle bandwagon. Which is not a bad thing at all. The consumer wins!

Ahem! In the meantime, we hope that the guys at Zain are working at providing wider 3G coverage. This is 2009, guys, and crawly GPRS is killing… slowly…

GSMArena now has a review of the Android-powered HTC Magic up on their website. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

HTC Magic’s elderly brother, the T-Mobile G1, was heavily criticized for the lack of a document viewer – a must for every smartphone, especially in this price range. Luckily, this time we found what we were looking for – using the Quickoffice and the PDF viewer you can view your office documents stored in the phone’s memory, the microSD card or received via email. Editing isn’t possible, at this stage but this is still a huge step forward for the Android OS.

This is indeed a step forward for the Android line, though it would have been a much better picture if documents editing had been included.

The review: HTC Magic review: Practical magic