MTN Uganda has launched a new Wi-Fi service that provides a number of hotspots around the country.

This service will be accessed by MTN and non MTN customers who have Wi-Fi capable devices in areas where the MTN Wi-Fi hotspots are located.

To use this service all customers are required to register and MTN customers will need to have an internet bundle of airtime on their numbers while non MTN customers will load airtime on their registered accounts on the portal to access the service.

This service has come at a time when MTN is cementing its position as the number one internet provider offering world class internet services in the country.

MTN says Wi-Fi service is an investment on the part of MTN aimed at providing customers with the best possible user experience across the country.

The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has assured Ugandans that they are ready and prepared to work with Uganda Communications Commission to ensure that the country is freed of the growing number of fake and counterfeit mobile headsets.

Speaking on the sideline of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 26000 Social Responsibility Standard training workshop in Kampala on Monday, Mr Ben Manyindo, the UNBS executive director, said that even if UCC is the lead agency in the fight against counterfeit phones, its role is limited to those already on the market while UNBS is tasked with ensuring that new fake phones don't find their way into the country.

"Even if we are not the lead agency in the fight against fake phones, we have a working relationship with UCC to implement this project. Our role is to detect fake phones at the different entry points and stopping them from coming on to our market. This is something we are committed to do," said Mr Manyindo.

He added: "As we do this, we believe UCC will run faster and come up with strong measures to detect fake phones and also have mitigation measures that will stop people from bypassing the systems and unblock the already blocked phones."

According to the latest UCC timeline on counterfeit phones, blocking of fake phones will start on January 31 with denying network access to new fake phones and switching off of all counterfeit phones already in use at the start of July 1.

Eng Godfrey Mutabazi, the UCC executive director, recently said that unless we are over ridden by public interest thus the need for more discussions, all counterfeit mobile phones would be disconnected by July 1.

Blocking of fake phones is expected to affect millions, mainly low income earners who are the biggest market for such phones considering their low prices.

Latest statistics indicate that their about 15 million active mobile phone subscribers on the market and about 17 million sold sim-cards altogether.

In East Africa Kenya is the only country that has implemented the switch off of fake mobile phones with about three million subscribers affected.

Tanzania also recently announced that it would as well make it impossible for fake mobile phones to access any service provider's network.

From Daily Monitor

Now you can measure your blood pressure just by touching it with a finger onto this (above) hi-tech blood pressure meter.

With the meter, blood pressure can be measured without using a cuff, making it easy to measure the blood pressures of babies and elderly people.
Blood pressure is measured by touching a button-shaped small area on the meter. There are LEDs and photo transistors embedded in the area. The light emitted from the LEDs is reflected on a finger and detected by the photo transistors.

This gadget was exhibited by Nihon University at Medica 2012.
According to the university, the blood pressure meter was developed based on a technology that is called "Phase Shift Method" and was developed by Sadao Omata, professor at the College of Engineering, Nihon University. The Phase Shift Method does not use an external power supply for driving and drives a system by using sensed signals.

"The method reduces the number of components, makes it easy to reduce size and drastically improves S/N ratio," Omata said.

Eaton Towers, an African telecom mast ownership and management company, secured a Shs153 billion ($60 million) loan facility to upgrade telecommunications towers in Uganda.

The facility acquired from Stanbic Bank Uganda, a subsidiary of the Standard Bank Group and International Finance Corporation (IFC) will be invested in new telecom towers as well as maintaining and managing those in existence.

According to chief financial officer of Eaton Towers Mr. Peter Lewis, “Mobile operators in Africa are increasingly viewing tower sharing as a key strategy to facilitate reductions in operating costs, enabling them to focus on providing mobile services,”

He added: “The facility will allow us to consolidate our position. This latest round of debt funding is a clear demonstration of our ability to efficiently leverage our assets across Africa.”

The funds come at a time when a number of telecom operators in Uganda are struggling to offer quality services to customers, thus calling for the need for players to upgrade systems as well as link up services.

From Monitor

South Africa is taking a continental lead in the integration and implementation of a green economy, as well as in putting initiatives in place to achieve the targets set out in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to ensure environmental sustainability, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Resource-based Sustainable Development competency area manager Dr Doug Trotter said during a presentation at the CSIR’s fourth biennial Science, Engineering and Technology conference last month.

“South Africa was faster off the starting blocks than other countries in Africa in terms of responding to the emergence of a green economy as a concept.

“Initiatives to achieve the environmental sustainability MDG are already in place. This is a new emerging area within the CSIR and within South Africa as a whole,” he said.

Trotter explained that, as a country that was heavily dependent on natural resources for economic development, South Africa had no choice but to take the initiatives geared towards a green economy seriously.

He added that natural resources had ecological limits and the country needed to consider ways of decoupling the meeting of economic growth targets from increasing natural resources extraction.

“A green economy is one that results in improved wellbeing and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.

“The underlying principle is to reduce the reliance of economic development on the increased consumption of, and damage to, natural resources and the environment, while meeting social needs and understanding inequities.

“To achieve this, we need to try to decouple the use of natural resources from the economy, while still maintaining economic growth,” stated Trotter.

He added that research was being done to find the most appropriate way to reduce the country’s reliance on coal and invest more in renewable-energy sources.

“If we reduce the use of our natural resources, we will reduce the environmental impact on the country,” he said.

Trotter further noted that the country needed to ensure that new initiatives and technologies were in place to improve economic growth and environmental protection.

“South Africa has started developing strategies to implement a green economy,” he stated.

He explained that the transition towards a green economy was seen as a means to drive and implement sustainability; however, both were relatively new concepts and there were significant capacity and knowledge gaps in both these fields.

“Both concepts are complex and require the integration of the complicated relationships between environmental, social and economic considerations.

“The capacity, tools and methods to address these complexities and understand previously unforeseen relationship effects are still in their relative infancy, but are significantly needed now,” he said.

Further, Trotter noted that growing global pressure was driving accelerated research and development in this area.

“The availability of improvements on existing methods and the ongoing development of new approaches, guidelines and decision support tools are helping to unpack the complex issues.

“South Africa, along with the international community, needs to enable legal and regulatory context reform in terms of how to drive and enable funding and investment frameworks moving forward in that domain.

“We also need to enable international partners and global trade conditions and set up new indicators for monitoring and reporting,” he stated.

Trotter stressed that green growth had to contribute to poverty reduction and socioeconomic development in the short to medium term, if it was going to gain traction in Africa.

“Comprehensive use of integrative review and planning, coupled with appropriately and purpose-designed decision-support tools, are crucial in unpacking the complexity of the path ahead,” he said.
From Engineering News