Author: ITPulse

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is seeking applications from Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across the world to apply for this year’s Digital World 2021 award. The Digital World 2021 award, which promotes digital innovation by small- and medium-sized enterprises around the world, recognizes tech innovation for social good, with live pitching, networking and master classes. ​​The Awards, now in their seventh edition, aim to hone SME pitching skills, showcase sustainable solutions, help make key connections, foster investment, and provide valuable United Nations recognition. According to ITU in an email message, the 2021 Awards seek out innovations related to information and…

The Nigerian government appears to be accusing Information and communications technology (ICT) companies of inciting hate campaigns against the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami. In a statement declaring full support for Dr. Pantami, which was issued by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, the government said there is now well-reported information that alleges newspaper editors rebuffed an attempt to financially induce them to run a smear campaign against the minister by some ICT companies. The statement said the reason behind the attempt is because, many of these ICT companies stand to lose financially…

By Elvis Eromosele A week is a week. This is almost true in every part of the world regardless of the season. Every week is also unique. The activities, the happenings and the stories define each week. This week has been epoch-making in every sense. This week, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the death of George Floyd. The verdict was unanimous. He was caught on camera kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over 9mins. George in pleading for his life kept saying “I can’t breathe.” After the verdict, Philonise Floyd, George’s brother said that he’s “able…

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has insisted that pre-registering of SIM card in the country remained an offense punishable under relevant regulations in the telecom sector and constitutes a breach of national security. This is coming as the telecom regulator as part of its routine enforcement activities to sanitise the industry of criminal elements, arrested no fewer than five suspected individuals for allegedly engaging in fraudulently registering and selling Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. The arrest was carried out by the Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Department of the Commission, in company with the operatives of the Department of State Services…

Next-generation cybersecurity company,  Sophos has unveiled new XGS Series firewall appliances with unrivaled performance and advanced protection against cyberattacks. The new appliances feature industry-best Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection, including native support for TLS 1.3, that is up to five times faster than other models available on the market today. “Sophos Firewall XGS Series appliances represent the most significant hardware upgrade that we have ever released and introduce unmatched detection, protection and speed,” said Dan Schiappa, chief product officer at Sophos. “Security teams can no longer afford to overlook encrypted traffic for fear of breaking something or hurting performance –…

Smile Nigeria has regreted the recent network outage experienced by its customers, explaining that the outage was due to network upgrade and modernization activities. In a statement issued in Lagos, the company disclosed that the upgrade and maintainance was embarked upon to strengthen its network infrastructure. Smile also disclosed that most customers affected by the outage have been compensated and that others yet to be compensated will surely get their bounties in due course. The statement noted that as a customer focused company, Smile has taken appropriate steps to forestall a reoccurrence of such an outage and to ensure that…

The combination of Accenture Ventures, Susa Ventures and TLcom Capital has invested a $3.5million seed raise in Nigerian fintech platform and Open Finance (API Economy) pioneers, Okra. While TLcom Capital is an existing investor in Okra, which has invested $1m pre-Seed round last year, the recent investment bringing Okra’s total funding at seed to $4.5m was lead by US-based Susa Ventures, with newly joined Accenture Ventures. ITPulse can understand that the capital will be deployed to expand Okra’s data infrastructure across Nigeria. Speaking on the investment, Fara Ashiru Jituboh, Okra co-founder and CEO/CTO says, “We build the tools that businesses…

Mr. Muhammed Rudman, Chief Executive Officer, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), Nigeria’s first and only neutral IXP, will chair NITRA TECHNOLOGY FORUM 2021 which is slated to hold on Thursday, May 27, 2021, at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos. The event will gather industry stakeholders in the Cloud hosting services and Data Center to discuss issues around the growth of data hosting, preservation and utilisation in the country. The NITRA TECHNOLOGY FORUM with its Theme: Achieving 30% Growth In Local Cloud Hosting By 2024, will also discuss challenges and solutions to factors mitigating against effective domiciliation of our locally-generated data. According to the…

Canon Central & North Africa (CCNA) has signed four new value business partners in key African markets as part of efforts to strengthen its footprint across the continent. In a press conference today, the company said the partnership is in response to key findings from the first-ever Middle East and Africa study on the State of the Printing Industry, which was conducted by Canon in conjunction with print industry news leader ME Printer in mid-2020. “Findings from our study highlights the growth of digitisation accelerated by the pandemic but also, significantly, indicates an evolution in customer demand, which points to a range of untapped growth opportunities…

The Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mr. Efosa Idehen has highlighted some of the measures the Commission has taken to engage telecom service providers with regards to unlimited data bundles. In a short video posted on the Commission’s official social media platforms, Mr. Idehen noted that NCC has continued to engage service providers to ensure that unlimited data bundles are not capped. This engagement, according to him is coming owing to the complaints by some telecom consumers that the service providers do cap the unlimited data bundle to 6gigabytes per day, even when such information…