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Why Nigeria Will Experience Immersive Broadband Connectivity by 2022

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I had noted that by 2022, Africa would enter the era of affordable and immersive connectivity. With the approval by FCC for SpaceX to launch global broadband service, you would experience total crash in the price of broadband services by 2022 in Nigeria.

SpaceX has a green light from the FCC to launch a network of thousands of satellites blanketing the globe with broadband. And you won’t have too long to wait — on a cosmic scale, anyway. Part of the agreement is that SpaceX launch half of its proposed satellites within six years.

The approval of SpaceX’s application was not seriously in doubt after last month’s memo from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was excited at the prospect of the first U.S.-based company being authorized to launch a constellation like this.

I expect SpaceX to offer a new level of competition against companies like MTN, Glo and Airtel in Nigeria. Though NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) would like to regulate the use of satellite connectivity in Nigeria, it could be a tough challenge. While WhatsApp is complementary [you need to pay for data to use WhatsApp with say MTN], satellite is a product displacement threat [you have nothing to do with terrestrial mobile operators]. Companies like MTN would see massive threats in coming years from satellite providers.

The biggest threat will come from satellite companies like ConnectAfrica which will reach communities at cost model that can keep the terrestrial players looking for cover. Elon Musk, not Glo or Airtel or Etisalat, may be the biggest competitor to all telecom operators in Africa in 5-10 years, with satellite broadband. He can crash broadband cost by 90% and suddenly GSM will be recorded only in museums. But that will happen if MTN Nigeria and others do not take action today.

At the end of this emerging rivalry, I expect customers to benefit. The fact is this: providing Internet services in Africa would become increasingly satellite-based to overcome most of the legal [right of passage] and infrastructural challenges operators face today. If SpaceX takes this up, it could change the ecosystem.

The Illusion of Demanding Privacy from Aggregators

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Aggregators

As privacy takes center stage, I expect Facebook and Google to take heat. Unlike Apple which makes most of its money selling its own services and products, Facebook and Google depend largely on advertisers or marketing others for revenue.

Tim Cook, Apple leader, is hitting Facebook on its privacy issues. Sure, he can afford to do that. The issue is not that Facebook and Google cannot have Apple-grade privacy. The problem is that if they do, they have no business.

A Google engineer noted last year that if they should make all Gmail users to use two-factor authentication, they would lose most users. Yes, people enjoy the convenience of great usability. Unfortunately, bank-level security is always going against convenience. 

I do not use Nigerian debit cards online because it is too complex to use. It is the only place on earth where you combine PIN, 3 digits at back of card, and (sometimes) password at the same time concurrently to spend your money online.

So, when lawmakers are berating Google on privacy asking questions “Why is that hard to do?”, they miss the point. Facebook and Google can give us CIA or FBI-level security, but if they do such, they have no business. They are aggregators and they need to make money. They just need to have a balance. But if you are worried on privacy, get out of social media. Do not expect any there anytime soon because the business model will not change overnight.

Have you used Starbuck app before? It practically has no security. You can wake up and someone has cleaned up all the money in your wallet. Call Starbucks why they cannot make it tougher for bad guys. You get no clear response. Nonetheless, within minutes, they would return the money in your wallet.

Starbucks knows what it is doing: you can lose $1m per year on digital theft but that loose security makes it easier to earn billions on revenue. If you fight hard to stop that $1m, you can fall from billions to hundreds of millions.

Yes, a Chief Information Security Officer that joins from FBI to a retail shop would be extremely surprised that on the poor security in the retail sector. And if he wants to implement FBI-grade, the CEO will ask him to forget it. The shop must sell things despite the risks of security. (These firms need just about enough security to get the business going. You expect them to have the best, they would never.)

A well-known ring of cybercriminals has obtained more than five million credit and debit card numbers from customers of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, according to a cybersecurity research firm that specializes in tracking stolen financial data. The data, the firm said, appears to have been stolen using software that was implanted into the cash register systems at the stores and that siphoned card numbers until last month. 

The Hudson’s Bay Company, the Canadian corporation that owns both retail chains, confirmed on Sunday that a breach had occurred.

That is how to understand security and privacy. It is not about tech. It is a business model. So, you would continue to read hacking of Target, Walmart, Saks Fifth Avenue, etc. That would not stop because retailers see that as cost of doing business.

Hackers have obtained more than five million credit and debit card numbers from customers of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor in a breach confirmed on Sunday by corporate owner Hudson’s Bay. It’s one of the largest known breaches of a retailer and follows similar incidents for Equifax in 2017, Home Depot in 2014, and Target in 2013 (Fortune Newsletter)

Discover Your Risks, Fix Them

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In microprocessor design, we engineer built-in redundancies. They waste transistors and silicon real estate. But you need them just in case. In finance, they have a different name: risk management. The world of commerce is driven by market forces for the dynamic equilibrium point. If you cannot manage risk, you have no future.

Yes, it has been 10 years since Bear Stearns collapsed. On a fire-sale to JP Morgan, it went for less than 7% of its market value from two days prior. As I noted in my First Day in America & Kindness of Diamond Bank, it was a turbulent period.

Then I started buying stocks in New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. One day I lost $26,700 when they nationalized Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I had cut-off all stock research to finish my dissertation and was not following market news. I felt bad and learnt a huge lesson – the professionals deserve their wages!

Remember this: if you have not identified 3 risks that could cause severe dislocation in your business, abandon everything this week and find them. Then, once discovered, find mitigation strategies.

Risk Management Process (Source: PIN)

Risk is good because without risk, there would not be business. Every business exists to fix frictions in markets. Those frictions are anchored on risks – endogenous and exogenous to the participants. Fixing them demands capabilities, the very reason customers look for those, with abilities, they can pay to help them.

Discover your risks, fix them.

 

Another presentation of a Risk Management Process (source: PM by PM)

Happy Easter

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Happy Easter, it is the day of resurrection. It is that day when that big unsolvable equation has a meaning.

Yes, [All Things]/ 0 = Infinite Grace.

Anything and all things, under that miry clay of life burdens, sorrows, pains, and hopelessness turn into infinite grace of hope after our Christ experienced death (the zero).

I experienced the rising of Christ this morning. Let the resurrection power catapult you into His pastures, out of the miry clay.

“He drew me up out of a horrible pit [a pit of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and set my feet upon a rock, steadying my steps and establishing my goings.”

Happy Easter!

New Classroom of the Ghana’s Teacher Who Drew Microsoft Word on Blackboard

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Remember that Ghana’s teacher that drew Microsoft Word on blackboard? He has a new classroom.

It is hard over there for our teachers in Africa. A teacher in Ghanahas to draw a word processing window on blackboard to teach his students. I commend this teacher and I would be happy to send his class a laptop if anyone knows him [Possibly the kids would see how a real Word Processing Window looks]. He is genuinely built to teach for investing such an effort for something that may be wiped out after 3 hours since he would need the same board for other things.

This was the old classroom.

THIS IS THE NEW CLASSROOM

 

Never doubt what one person can do in the lives of many.