Yesterday my bro came to me with a funny story of a red number calling which meant that you die at 1 am or something like that. I grilled him how the number would predict my death and he said he was being nice to the sister.

I laughed and reminded him of the movie one missed call, which had a similar story. He indicated that the story was going on Facebook and I can imagine it has spread very fast. I though it was only him.

But this morning someone raised the issue on a mailinglist and I wondered whether they were serious. Well, it seems am the only one not clued in because the Communications Commission of Kenya has just issued a statement to that effect.

I must say I am impressed by the way CCK has been responding to issues nowadays; from managing price wars to determining dominant player status in the telecoms industry, seems they are alert and I think it can only get better.

It also shows CCK is committed to ensuring the broadcast media exercises caution because it has reacted fast; maybe to cut the fear mongering. Maybe in hot political times, CCK will say that it acts all the times, whether political or otherwise.

Anyway, here is the press release from CCK....

The attention of the Commission has been drawn to SMS and email messages that are doing the rounds in the country warning mobile users against receiving calls from unknown or certain listed numbers. The messages further allege that receipt of calls from either the unknown or listed numbers would cause “brain haemorrhage due to high frequency”.

Upon analysis of the messages, the Commission has established the warnings are a hoax generated by unscrupulous people bent on causing fear and despondency among members of the public. The listed numbers are non-existent as mobile, fixed or international calls. In addition, the alleged haemorrhage due to high frequency has no technical basis whatsoever. The Commission, therefore, wishes to urge the public to ignore these messages and go about their business without any fear. The public is also advised to avoid fuelling the fear by transmitting the said messages to friends and family members either through SMS or email forwarding.

The Commission also wishes to call on the media, particularly FM stations, to exercise responsibility and avoid fuelling fear and despondency among Kenyans by dwelling on these baseless rumours.

We further wish to warn the originators of these messages that they are in breach of the law (i.e. Section 29 of the Kenya Communications Act, 1998). The Commission is already in contact with law enforcement agencies to ensure that the perpetrators of this crime are brought to book.

Last week I attended Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum; it brought together ISPs, content provider and regulators from 20 African countries but the Communications Commission of Kenya was conspicuously missing.

It is only after attending such meetings that you understand some of the reasons the cost of internet will not drop for the individual, who is probably looking forward to the day we pay $20 per month for limited connectivity.

First, peering means exchange of content between ISPs at a central point like the Internet Exchange point (IXP). Think of an IXP as a hub in airline terms. Nairobi is the regional hub and most arlines with no connections to the region from Europe usually get their passengers to Nairobi, then they are taken over by KQ or another airline.

For instance, if you are travelling from Windhoek Namibia to Lome in Togo, you will have to buy a ticket from different airlines or from one airline that goes to Lome, which is likely to give the cheaper option. If you decide to travel SAA then KQ, there is no doubt the ticket might be higher; this is Africa!

The same principle applies, if your content is hosted abroad and you are in Kinshasa, you have a choice of ISPs that will charge the cost of international connectivity because at some point, the data will leave your ISP network to another, and they have to pay. Assuming that content was hosted locally, it means that cost of international connectivity would be eliminated.

But the internet costs remain the same whether local or international, so why bother? Thats a question that many people ask and the answer is simple; we do not generate enough content to spur competition in hosting services and lower the costs. Abroad, people can charge lower because maybe the server is in a garage somewhere, under the bed or in a company like Yahoo, that attracts 10 million sites a year, so it can afford to charge 10 dollars and still make money.

Ever wondered why a ticket to Malawi costs $800 and one to South Africa costs $400 yet it may seem logical that the reverse be the case? Well, it is argued that the Jo'Burg route has more flights and airlines compared to Malawi and therefore more competition. Indeed, if you are going to Lilongwe via Kenya Airways, you might be taken on a round trip of your life but if they attempted that on the Jo'burg route, they may lose the customers.

Anyway, if the ISPs in the region do not see the need to share content and so long as we continue hosting abroad, the cost will remain high. Of course those are not the only issues, there is licensing and the desire to get a quick return on investment, maybe the period may be made longer.

There are ways content providers can reduce costs by setting up POPs like in Nigeria and ISPs evolving to be more of regional carriers and reduce backhauling costs like Orange is doing in the region

There is no doubt that the industry is getting better; maybe most us host 9 out of 10 websites locally but it will probably get to a time when ISPs say that if you access websites that are local, then the cost is low and flat, maybe like they do with on network calls.

It may look simplistic but we all have a role to play in making internet cheaper. Follow-up piece can address licensing issues and benefits we can expect from having Kenyan Internet Exchange Point, Mombasa Internet Exchange Point and a POP hosted at Internet Solutions in Kenya.

There is something about people, internet and their laptops. I think if you want people to become the absolute anti-social, make sure they have internet- at least for the addicts. You almost do not talk to the person seated next, and if you do, then it is an absolute necessity.

On the referendum day, the iHub was buzzing and there were more laptops than you can think, after all, there was proof that this was going to be a very tech day for the team monitoring via www.uchaguzi.co.ke

Being at the iHub on the day, you get to help a bit and work at the same time and get to catch up if you find someone you know or if you find the time. Well, I always get time to chit chat in between the emails and calls, if the photo below is anything to go by.

Thanks to Erik, for alerting me of this photo, I was looking quite busy, on phone, on the laptop and all... but I guess I was just acting busy.

From bird's eye view, we all look very busy....

Maybe if I wasn't acting busy I would have been busy playing fusball in the background like people would do once in a while.

But when I realized the camera was zooming on me, I had to smile, you never know who will see the photo :)

Thanks to Daudi and Erik for the photos :)

Its not everyday that Kenyans have the same topic on the Facebook status messages; it must have been special- yes, its about the new constitution.

It was the day that people took time to update on twitter, whine about the long queues, and report any incidences at the polling station. This made it easier for journalists attending the press conference with the electoral commission to ask questions. I actually heard two issues that were posted on twitter raised with the chair of IIEC, which was good. This means that the mainstream media is paying close attention to discussions on social media.

I think the best response was the number of volunteers who came to the iHub for the www.uchaguzi.co.ke monitoring exercise. I got to the iHub and I almost thought I was in the wrong place- thank goodness for the few Ushahidi people in; the lesson was that while so much is at stake, people are willing to do anything.

Uchaguzi is the forum for user generated content and it shows that tech has caught on.

The referendum may just be a day, but it shows the signs of things to come in the general election, which tends to spread over several days and has its own measure of controversies.

Uchaguzi team has mapped all the constituencies in Kenya, although there were some challenges with uploading the CSV file and getting the lat/longitudes, it shows that in 2012 the whole thing will be perfected.

So, if anyone has an issue to raise, whether positive or negative, am sure www.uchaguzi.co.ke is the place to do it.

Tech power!

Awards are now flowing in, may be the tech start-ups will benefit..... here is the announcement.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2010 Legatum

Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship.   With prize money of USD 350,000, the

2010 Legatum Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship will continue the tradition

of recognizing and rewarding the very best examples of small and

medium-sized businesses, and spotlighting the continent¹s most inspiring

business leaders.

This year we are looking for online applications from Botswana, Cameroon,

Cote D¹Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The application form and more details of the program are available at www.africaawards.com.

A Grand Prize of USD 100,000 and five runners-up prizes of USD 50,000 each will be awarded at a Gala Awards Banquet taking place in Accra in early

December 2010.

Winners will be selected on their ability to operate truly sustainable and

innovative businesses and demonstrated excellence in:

€Creating value for owners/shareholders

€Long-term business strategy

€Innovative and effective market strategies

€Leadership, culture and values

€Investment in their employees

The competition is open to all businesses that have had a for-profit entity

in existence for three years or more; located in one of the designated 15

countries; and with annual revenues of between US$2 ­20 million.

Applications will close on August 31st, 2010.

Its always nice to see old friends and evening functions provide a perfect opportunity; given that parallel sessions may not promote "catching up".

It was time to catch up with Remmy Nweke and Brenda Zulu; we had a chance to remember the old times

We were all happy when they announced that food would be served before kick off; it was a better plan compared to waiting till half time or eating when the game was going on.

Then it was time for testing MTN knowledge and those who were good at it were rewarded

But not all were lucky; she could not believe that she got the answer wrong and missed the gift pack!

When Guy Berger was telling me about tweetdeck French translation, he probably did not know that it will be hard to even send an email, forget do the blog posts, podcasts and video.

He was right to make suggestions, given that last year, there was a projector showing all the twitter feeds and given the number of journalists that are here with lots of laptops, you can imagine the amount of social media that would have been in use; it would have been "churnalism".

An hour after Guy gave me the hint and I was busy sharing with the other, the system became slow; I thought it was because of the many internet users and maybe hardware issues.

Then it became bad and all journalists became grumpy because they could not get online; only those with local mobile phones could send tweets, which actually took out the fun.

It was hard to understand how Rhodes University could be down, given its an ISP and is very efficient; by lunch break, we were told that SEACOM was down, which was bad for us.

SEACOM is great, and am sure when the capacity is up, its great but it would have been nice to see who would have been tweeting more; the new media professors or the students or working journalists.

The funniest thing was that the MTN stand just outside was working well and they had public laptops, which as you can guess pulled many people. Love it or hate it, MTN saved the day for some of us.

The SEACOM social media team is very efficient, sent them a tweet asking about the downtimes and they confirmed they had a repeater problem somewhere between Mombasa and Mumbai.

My next question was why the capacity was not being routed through SAT 3 or TEAMS, I thought they had redundancy, given that TATA is all over. They confirmed that they had no redundancy, but why?

Anyway, I am sitting here whining but am lucky to have the modem, can you imagine having 600 journalists and the #ha2010 hashtag on twitter is virtually empty? Hard to imagine.

To answer my questions, today morning I received the following press release from SEACOM and as of lunch time there was no update on this, so take it as the latest.

"SEACOM has experienced a submarine cable failure resulting in service downtime between Mumbai and Mombasa. Current investigations indicate that a repeater has failed on segment 9 of the SEACOM cable, which is offshore to the north of Mombasa. This unexpected failure affects traffic towards both India and Europe. Traffic within Africa is not affected.

SEACOM has initiated emergency repair procedures to replace the repeater. Once mobilized, the repair ship is deployed to the location of the fault to pick up the cable. The cable is then brought on board to undergo the repair – the faulty element is replaced with a new repeater - before being put back in the water.

Whilst the repair process itself will only take a few hours, the overall process may last a minimum of 6-8 days. The actual duration is unpredictable due to external factors such as transit time of the ship, weather conditions and time to locate the cable. For these reasons, the estimated duration of this repair remains uncertain.

SEACOM in co-operation with its clients, is actively seeking alternatives to restore service whilst the repairs are undertaken. "

Elvira van Noort was very excited to see her former professors at the University of Eutrect; it was great they were here to witness how she has "grown up" and busy training citizen journalism in Grahamstown. I almost went to the table to say hello to the professors; given her excitement.

Elvira represents many journalists who are meeting at the same venue with their former lecturers attending the World Journalism Educators Congress, a parallel meeting with Highway Africa.

It is the first time that such a meeting is taking place; so when people complain about the standards of journalism, you can turn to the educators and find out whats going on; at the same time, educators can turn and question journalists on what happened to all the lessons and massive notes given in class.

For a conference that is usually held in September and had few scholarships given the world cup pricing of everything, Highway Africa is very attended and the interaction with the educators is likely to have positive effects.

The corporate sector also turned up as usual; MTN, Telkom and Multichoice are here with huge stands. One of the sessions had the corporates and Nozipho January-Bardill from MTN was asked about the stories she thinks journalists should be covered.

Her answers boiled down to the usual stuff of positive and detailed stories; she gave the example of a BBC documentary on Oliver Tambo and wonders why SABC had not done it. The upshot was that the reason people switch to international channels is mainly because of the depth of reportage.

For the next three days, there will be interactions and discussions on some of the challenges affecting journalism and the continent. There will be no shifting blame because the journalists, educators, public and private sector are there to defend or expound on the status quo.

Ends

It is the talk of town, buzzing on twitter, facebook; people just can't stop talking about Ghana and what would happen if it upsets Uruguay: Africa will have won and reached a new football high.

Everybody is an expert on football now, and hypothesizing on what Ghana should or should not do is common. This morning I took a taxi and the driver could not stop talking, giving me his run down on Ghana and how Michael Essien must be feeling bad that he is not in the team.

For a guy who can not speak proper English, I must say he was good; he gave me his analysis of what he thinks went wrong with African teams and how Portugal pulled a fast one on Ivory Coast by scoring seven goals against North Korea; meaning that the goal difference would remain far more superior.

Online, even my American friend, who I never thought had interest is sports beyond basketball, emailed me to say "go black stars". I think its great that Ghana knocked out the US, I guess it raised some awareness.

At the Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, fans are gathered chanting and singing while others are blowing the vuvuzelas. It seems people have gone home or their teams are eliminated because the noise is not as much.

The radio stations have been running analysis from morning and it seems the belief in the Ghana team has gone higher. People are impressed that the team may not have renowned stars like Cameroon or Ivory Coast but is playing as a team, which is vital in the games.

Whether Ghana wins or loses tonight, there will be no doubt that African hopes were high and that the people who believed in the Black Stars even before the kick off were right.

Ends

The version looks a bit sophisticated compared to the common one that requires lots of energy and skill

I think they can grow head muscles with the stuff on the head...

It looks massive- jokes aside...