Saving DSO from needless controversies, by Okoh Aihe
Writing about the fresh aspirations of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) on the Digital Switch-Over (DSO) and FreeTV being prepped for launch on June 17, 2026, we declared our support for the regulator in choosing the satellite option but warned that the process needs to be more transparent and inclusive. Before the afternoon of the very […]
And the USSD load returns to the subscriber
By Okoh Aihe WHEN a significant matter of interest nearly boiled over in the telecommunications industry the other day, the stakeholders came together on a round table, perhaps minus one party, and at the end arrived on an ingenious solution which returned the load to the subscriber. How very unfortunate! They say in my part […]
Finally, timeline comes for Digital Switchover, DSO
By Okoh Aihe THERE is the street language of “money talks”. Translated in street value, it means that money has so much power that it can virtually do anything for the owner, command authority and bend people into oxymoronic genuflection or sustained obsequiousness. Money talks. Perhaps, this is why in 1969, the British author, James […]
USSD: What happens to anarchy deferred?
By Okoh Aihe On this bright Monday morning, as I put my materials together for this Wednesday column, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, is holding a crisis meeting with the various stakeholders of the telecommunications industry in trying to ward off a USSD misunderstanding that is threatening to obscure most […]
USSD CODE, CBN, Banks, Telcos and the coming of anarchy
By Okoh Aihe I DO not like the word, anarchy. The word serves a full dose of what is happening in our land, a chaotic state of disorderliness where nobody seems to be in charge, where everybody seems to smell imminent perdition and yet unable to do something about it. Where students disappear at school […]
A needed DSO and protruding questions
By Okoh Aihe ONE young lady from a radio station in Lagos searched me out. She had read a couple of my materials on broadcasting and needed to ask some questions on Digital Switchover, DSO, by way of getting some more understanding that she, in turn, could extend to her audience. This is a job […]
For Telecoms, a place in the sun for alarmists
By Okoh Aihe THERE was suppressed excitement across the land last week. The country’s economy dealt a massive blow into depression by COVID-19 suddenly witnessed a renaissance, a stirring out of that dazed stupor into someplace under the sun, making some of us learn how to smile again. The news was so sudden that some […]
For Telecoms, a place in the sun for alarmists
By Okoh Aihe There was suppressed excitement across the land last week. The country’s economy dealt a massive blow into depression by COVID-19 suddenly witnessed a renaissance, a stirring out of that dazed stupor into someplace under the sun, making some of us learn how to smile again. The news was so sudden that some […]
FEC returns life to the DSO
By Okoh Aihe NIGERIA is not starved of good people to do us proud. On Monday, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala demonstrated this in making history as the first African and first woman ever to become the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, WTO, to global acclaim. Her first virtual press conference espoused the qualities for which […]
Let the world hear our stories
Great stories make great content on television, big screen, or even mobile terminals. Those who say content is king love good stories, the sort that spikes the adrenalin, make it impossible to put down a book or hook you permanently on the screen, large or small, and sometimes become very redeeming in challenging you to […]
Those haunting images from SIM-NIN integration centres
Some little acts of benevolence are worth celebrating. At least from a government with the supercilious reasoning that if some relief in governance appears remotely on the horizon, the people need to lead an obsequious epiphany to the shrine of political patronage at the centre. That, by the way, is my little acknowledgment that the […]
Telecoms: Matching industry stats with subscribers peace of mind
There is a total lack of shame when the puissant political opportunists who superintend our lives claim credit for every minuscule strand of progress, appropriate credit for everything but the ugly. Soon and very soon they will claim credit for the rising and the setting of the sun except that such foolhardiness will attract the […]
Telecoms: Matching industry stats with subscribers peace of mind
By Okoh Aihe THERE is a total lack of shame when the puissant political opportunists who superintend our lives claim credit for every minuscule strand of progress, appropriate credit for everything but the ugly. Soon and very soon they will claim credit for the rising and the setting of the sun except that such foolhardiness […]
Time to bring closure to the Digital Switchover process
By Okoh Aihe WHILE trying to take some dispassionate look at the broadcast industry last weekend, my mind kept returning to the village, to the hilarious but affectionate story of one old man whose wife was very sickly. At every opportunity the old man would inform humorously that the wife had been attended to by […]
For SIM/NIN registration, a little appeal
By Okoh Aihe NOTHING could have made it more expedient than the lives that would be involved. And there are so many. Looking at the images on television now, looking at pictures in the newspapers, of thousands of people swirling in desperation to do a comprehensive registration of their phones by syncing the numbers with […]
For telecoms, a look back in Hope
By Okoh Aihe THE above title is not totally my idea. It is inspired by John Osborne’s 1956 play, Look Back in Anger, which played out at the Royal Theatre in the United Kingdom and was staged in parts of the world, thus making the playwright very wealthy and quite popular. But placed side by […]
