International Telecommunications satellite organization (ITSO) has organized its first African held assembly in Kampala Uganda. This will be officially opened by the President of Uganda H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and the assembly is expected to run for 4 days.

The assembly of parties will be called to order on 3rd July 2012 in Victoria room, Serena conference center located at the Serena Hotel Kampala.
This conference will be attended by all telecom companies all over the world and among the invited guests will be the Minister of Information and Communications Technology H.E Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda.

For more information visit ITSO events

Finally the fined telecom companies in Nigeria by Nigerian Communication Communications (NCC) paid up a sum of N1.17bn over poor quality of services to telecommunications subscriber on their respective networks.  The fined telecoms are MTN, Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat.

NCC imposed fines mounting to N360million to MTN and Etisalat each while while Airtel and Globacom were fined N270 million and N180 million, respectively.
This all happened some two weeks ago after Telecoms did violate a couple of regulatory quality policies.

According to Business Daily Online, Wale Goodluck, Corporate Services Executive, MTN, who was cornered by newsmen on Tuesday at the 6th Annual Business Law conference in Lagos, said that MTN had paid the fines. "We have paid the fines to NCC", he said.

From: Business Daily Online

On 14^th/June/2012 the uganda's 2012 - 2013 budget was read and in scrutinizing ICT allocation stayed low in fact it was further cut down.

According to New Vision uganda's leading daily news, revenue allocations to the Information and communication (ICT) sector have stayed minimal and unable to put in place appropriate infrastructure to aid the Sector's growth.

Allocations to ICT reduced from Shs 12.1 billion in 2011/12 to 12billion in 2012/13, representing a mere 0.1 percent of the country's 11.1 trillion resource envelope.

In a budget that was once again largely silent about the ICT sector, there was only one positive to note. Next financial  year's budget reduced import duty on set-top boxes from 25 per cent to 0 per cent for a period of one year as a way of facilitating the digital migration process.

This comes on the back of the fact that ICT sector continues to be a growth leader, both in terms of revenue and GDP contributions to government. For example, telecoms are the biggest tax payers in the land.

But, even with its fast growth and well known potential, the ICT Sector remains the least funded, with a meager 0.2 per cent of the total budgetary ceiling in the 2010/11 financial year and about o.1 per cent allocation in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 financial years.

Reacting to yesterday's revelation, Mr. Geoffrey Mutabazi, the executive director Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), said: "It is contradictory that ICT is the main driver of growth and yet all the revenues it generates are taken away. How do you expect the industry to grow if you are not investing back?"

He added:"But again government has several ICT projects such as e-governance, e-education and e-health which need funding .Let us wait and see how the private sector will develop ICT in Uganda."

"The allocation of Shs 12billion is a sign that ICT development has been left to the private sector, "Eng. John Mark Ssebunya, an ICT entrepreneur, noted.

However, Mr. Michael Niyitegeka the corporate relations officer at Makerere University College of Computing and Information Science (CIS) said it is important to first understand the country's ICT accomplishments in order to understand its performance and requirements.

"Before you analyze how much has been allocated, we need to first look at what we already have and its significance .much of the ICT resources available are still under-utilized, "he said.

Proposals for Internet addresses ending in ".google," ''.amazon" and ".auto" are among the nearly 2,000 submitted as part of the largest expansion in the online address system.

Apple Inc., Sony Corp. and American Express Co. are among companies that are seeking names with their brands. Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. sought dozens of names, including ".app," and ".play." The wine company Gallo Vineyards Inc. wants ".barefoot."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced the proposals for Internet suffixes, the ".com" part of an Internet address, in London on Wednesday. They now go through a review process that could take months or years.

"The Internet is about to change forever," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom declared, adding that new innovations could find homes in the new addresses.

There were 1,930 proposals for 1,409 different suffixes. The bulk came from North America and Europe.

If approved, the new suffixes would rival ".com" and about 300 others now in use. Companies would be able to create separate websites and separate addresses for each of their products and brands, even as they keep their existing ".com" name. Businesses that joined the Internet late, and found desirable ".com" names taken, would have alternatives.

From a technical standpoint, the names let Internet-connected computers know where to send email and locate websites. But they've come to mean much more. For Amazon.com Inc., for instance, the domain name is the heart of the company, not just an address.

The expansion will allow suffixes that represent hobbies, ethnic groups, corporate brand names and more.

Where the proposals came from in many ways mirrored where the Internet is used most. Nearly half of the proposals — 911 — were from North America and another 675 came from Europe.

Only 17 proposals came from Africa and 24 came from Latin America and the Caribbean — areas where Internet use is relatively low.

One surprise came from the Asia-Pacific region, which had 303 proposals, or 16 percent of the total. It was believed that Asia might get more because the expansion will lift current restrictions on non-English characters and permit suffixes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Some of the bids for Asian suffixes came from North American or European companies. A European subsidiary of VeriSign Inc., the current operator of ".com," is seeking the equivalent in Chinese, Thai and other languages.

There were 116 proposals, or 6 percent, for suffixes using characters beyond the 26 English letters.

Many of the 1,930 proposals were duplicates. Suffixes in contention are likely to include ".bank," ''.secure" and ".web." ICANN is encouraging competing bidders to work out an agreement. The organization will hold an auction if the parties fail to reach a compromise. Of the 1,930 proposals, 751 were for 230 different suffixes, while the remaining 1,179 were unique. That means there were 1,409 distinct suffixes proposed.

The public can now comment on the proposals. Someone can claim a trademark violation or argue that a proposed suffix is offensive.

It'll take at least a year or two for ICANN to approve the first of these new suffixes. ICANN will review each proposal to make sure that its financial plan is sound and that contingencies exist in case a company goes out of business. Bidders also must pass criminal background checks.

Companies and groups had to pay $185,000 per proposal. Suffixes could potentially generate millions of dollars a year for winning bidders as they sell names ending in some of the approved names. Critics of the expansion include a coalition of business groups worried about protecting their brands in newly created names.

From: ABC News

Qualcomm Atheros Inc., the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, yesterday (6th/June/2012) at COMPUTEX TAIPEI demonstrated the industry’s first solutions that integrate 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity for tablets and notebook computers.

The chip is designed to deliver connectivity with the speed and reliability essential to today’s mobile computing environments of consumers that create, download and stream media files over wireless networks.
Qualcomm Atheros’ 802.11ac offers more than three times the Wi-Fi performance of 802.11n per stream and is capable of delivering up to 1.3 Gbps PHY rates with the company’s 3-stream solutions. The new solutions also feature Bluetooth 4.0 with low-power mode for connecting mobile computers to wireless keyboards, headsets, speakers, printers and other peripherals while also conserving battery power.

The WCN3680 mobile 802.11ac solution for tablets, features integrated Bluetooth 4.0 and FM capabilities. Paired with Qualcomm’s high-performance Snapdragon APQ8064 application processor, the solution delivers always-on, always-connected mobile computing experiences on tablet platforms. The WCN3680 supports 433 Mbps maximum PHY rates, with end-user throughput up to 200 Mbps for tablets based on Windows 8, Windows RT, Android and other Linux-based operating systems.

For notebooks, the QCA9862 and QCA9860 are 2- and 3-stream, dual-band 802.11ac solutions with integrated Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. The PCIe-based designs support up to 1.3 Gbps (3-stream) or 867 Mbps (2-stream) PHY rates for notebooks operating on Windows and Linux-based operating systems. In addition, Qualcomm Atheros’ enhanced Fast Channel Switch (FCS) feature maximizes concurrent throughput and performance with access points and peer-to-peer connections.

All of Qualcomm Atheros’ 802.11ac solutions—from mobile to networking designs—are optimized to address the processing demands of 802.11ac.Their unique architecture features hardware acceleration to offload Wi-Fi processing from the host CPU. The resulting performance and power efficiencies enable users to enjoy Gigabit Wi-Fi without compromising on battery life.