In a press release, Mr Arnoud van Wijk, Disability Projects Coordinator for the Internet Society (ISOC), who was born deaf, knows only too well the frustration Internet users with a disability experience from many current Internet services.

“During the past few years, the use of the Internet as a modern replacement for telephony has accelerated,” said Mr van Wijk. “The ability to include more media in calls provides an excellent opportunity to include people with disabilities in online conversational services. But too often discriminatory voice telephony
services are simply re-created.”

With this motivation, Mr van Wijk and other researchers have documented a technique for “real-time text”; combining existing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards to enable text streaming over Internet Protocol networks.

The technique uses Internet telephony protocols to ensure compatibility with voice, video, and other multimedia services on the Internet. It allows text to be sent and received on a character by character basis, with each character sent and displayed immediately once typed, giving text the same conversational character as voice communication.

According to Mr van Wijk, “Internet Telephony is rapidly becoming a major way of staying in touch. But it breaks the traditional text telephone, which deaf and hard of hearing people used in the past to call each other. The real-time text technique addresses this problem and can be integrated with Internet telephony.”

Along with fellow technologist Guido Gybels, Director of New Technologies at RNID (UK), and with contributions from other experts in communication and accessibility for people with disabilities, Mr
van Wijk edited and co-authored ‘Framework for Real-Time Text over IP Using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)’, which the IETF has just published as an informational document in its ‘Request for Comment’ series as RFC 5194.

To further progress work in this field, this week sees the launch of the ‘Real-Time Text task force’ (R3TF), an informal forum for engineers, motivated individuals, experts, companies and organisations. The R3TF has received incubation support from ISOC, as part of its “Enabling Access” initiative, under which ISOC promotes a diverse range of projects aimed at breaking down the barriers to Internet access.

Michael Burks, Chairman, and Cynthia Waddell, Vice Chairman of ISOC’s Disability & Special Needs Chapter, welcome the announcement of the new task force.

“Accessibility for persons with disabilities is critical and must be maintained in the coming convergence,” said Ms Waddell, an Accessibility Expert to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), who is hard of hearing herself. “But it is worth pointing out that, like many disability projects, this effort has the potential to provide more options and greater usability for all users in many situations.

The blossoming of multimedia content on the Internet in recent years has revolutionized personal interactions, business communications, and other online services. But for millions of Internet users with sensory disabilities, many of the communication tools remain frustratingly out of their reach.

In a press release, Mr Arnoud van Wijk, Disability Projects Coordinator for the Internet Society (ISOC), who was born deaf, knows only too well the frustration Internet users with a disability experience from many current Internet services.

“During the past few years, the use of the Internet as a modern replacement for telephony has accelerated,” said Mr van Wijk. “The ability to include more media in calls provides an excellent opportunity to include people with disabilities in online conversational services. But too often discriminatory voice telephony services are simply re-created.”

With this motivation, Mr van Wijk and other researchers have documented a technique for “real-time text”; combining existing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards to enable text streaming over Internet Protocol networks.

The technique uses Internet telephony protocols to ensure compatibility with voice, video, and other multimedia services on the Internet. It allows text to be sent and received on a character by character basis, with each character sent and displayed immediately once typed, giving text the same conversational character as voice communication.

According to Mr van Wijk, “Internet Telephony is rapidly becoming a major way of staying in touch. But it breaks the traditional text telephone, which deaf and hard of hearing people used in the past to call each other. The real-time text technique addresses this problem and can be integrated with Internet telephony.”

Along with fellow technologist Guido Gybels, Director of New Technologies at RNID (UK), and with contributions from other experts in communication and accessibility for people with disabilities, Mr
van Wijk edited and co-authored ‘Framework for Real-Time Text over IP Using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)’, which the IETF has just published as an informational document in its ‘Request for Comment’ series as RFC 5194.

To further progress work in this field, this week sees the launch of the ‘Real-Time Text task force’ (R3TF), an informal forum for engineers, motivated individuals, experts, companies and organisations. The R3TF has received incubation support from ISOC, as part of its “Enabling Access” initiative, under which ISOC promotes a diverse range of projects aimed at breaking down the barriers to Internet access.

Michael Burks, Chairman, and Cynthia Waddell, Vice Chairman of ISOC’s Disability & Special Needs Chapter, welcome the announcement of the new task force.

“Accessibility for persons with disabilities is critical and must be maintained in the coming convergence,” said Ms Waddell, an Accessibility Expert to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), who is hard of hearing herself. “But it is worth pointing out that, like many disability projects, this effort has the potential to provide more options and greater usability for all users in many situations.

Job Purpose

As an IT Project and Planning Manager, you will play a key role in managing and delivering multiple strategic projects within the company, often simultaneously. We are looking for intelligent, confident, motivated Project Manager to manage and take responsibility for the delivery of projects. You will report to the IT Director (Project Management Office). You will work with a team of highly dynamic people in a fast paced environment and collaborate with Product Specialists and the Product Steering Group.

Reporting To The Information Technology Director the Following will be the Key Responsibilities:

A. Project management:

• Implement project plans, managing them to ensure successful delivery
• Apply the PM Methodology to fit the project
• Ensure every project is effectively initiated and at completion closed with involvement from business stakeholders
• Ensure required project documents are signed off as required by the Project Office
• Manage project dependencies and constraints
• Plan resource needs and work with team managers to resolve constraints and issues
• Effectively raise project related risks and issues and make sure they are resolved
• Communicate project progress through effective status reporting
• Attend/organise/chair and minute project/development related meetings
• Manage project change management
• Pro-actively contribute to improvement of PM Methods (tools, processes)
• Pro-actively contribute to improvement of IT KPIs

B. Documentation:

• Work with the partners to ensure that scope and requirements are accurately specified for projects and that appropriate sign-offs are obtained
• Ensure that the development team deliver according to specification

C. Development:

• Ensure project alignment to SDLC through development, deployment and release management
• Oversee the development process (i.e. taking software from development, through testing and onto the live server)
• Ensure that all the pre-requisites are in place before each new release is made (e.g. development, test pre-live and live environments, roll-back plans)
• Manage project / development related bugs to ensure that they are prioritised and rectified

D. Testing:

• Ensure project alignment to testing methodology
• Together with the Testing Facilitator, manage testing lifecycle and
   dependencies to avoid conflict

E. IT and PSG:

• Work with Billing, VAS, Architecture and Application Support to ensure applications are correctly architected and supported

Requirements:

• University Degree in Business & Computer Science
• Project Management Qualification
• Solid Technology Project Management experience (5 years or more)
• Experience of working with technology development teams
• Good working knowledge and demonstrable experience with Project Methodologies
• Good working knowledge and demonstrable experience with SDLC’s
• Flexible. Must be able to run multiple projects at any one time
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills to mitigate risk
• Good judgment and decision-making skills
• Possess excellent oral/written communications skills providing the ability to engage with business sponsors and owners
• Mobile telecommunications experience will be an added advantage

Personal Behaviour Required in the Post

The job holder must be a people person with excellent interpersonal, organising and planning skills. The job holder must have the following qualities - Integrity - Honesty, trustworthiness and also exhibit professionalism.

Dates: Tuesday, 29th July, 2008 to Monday, 4th August, 2008

Venue: Indeco Hall near Zambia Development Agency

Theme: Growth in diversity

The main objective of the community is to bring about knowledge and awareness of FLOSS. Further to this OSZ aims to develop solutions that are specific to Zambia. The community’s objective is to attain levels were information is readily accessible in sectors such as agriculture, medical records, educational records, governance, or credit records. Zambia lacks a central storage for such information; this could be due to lack of technical knowledge in the record-keeping/management, a lack of interest in embracing technology, or the fear that investing in this technology could be too costly.

OSZ is determined to bring FLOSS in the business stream and use it to solve current ICT problems being faced in Zambia. FLOSS provides many opportunities for developing countries and Zambia is placed at an
advantage to benefit from it. The social sector in Zambia has lagged behind in adapting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to efficiently deliver services in various communities. Being a country that suffers greatly from the digital divide, OSZ’s promotion of FLOSS arms Zambians with the tools necessary to bridge this gap cost-effectively. The nature of FLOSS and the invitation to users to participate in its growth increases people knowledge, pride, and personal accomplishment. FLOSS liberates users from being mere users but transforms to contributors of the software development process itself. Developing countries such as Zambia can boost the morale of its citizens by encouraging them to use and participate in the use, development and growth of FLOSS.

OSZ community has human resource that can be developed and harnessed to develop and support ICT projects. OSZ thrives upon the expertise of many IT professionals who are specialized in various aspect of IT. Granted, a great deal of this expertise of strongly closed source inspired. OSZ has human resources who are fully capable of setting up Ethernet networks, wide area networks, and metropolitan area networks. The OSZ human resources are also fully capable of developing software solutions in various formats, web-based, Windows-based, and Linuxbased solutions. The OSZ human resources is capable of setting up various types of servers ranging from web servers, DNS servers, DHCP servers, mail servers, authentication servers, as well as a plethora of other servers as may be required.

OSZ will undertake various projects ranging from consultancy to direct user support and software development in order to cover running costs. With a human resource crew that can deliver almost all types of IT solutions, OSZ will charge for services rendered. The cost of the services will not be exorbitant but will be much cheaper than commercial rates; costs are kept low in order to promote open source.

PDF Download of Open Source Zambia Developers Community Proposal

As part of its long tradition of helping build technical capacity, ISOC provides a Fellowship program that enables technologists from developing regions to attend the IETF, while also pairing them with an experienced mentor to integrate their participation rapidly.

This fellowship round attracted 70 applications resulting in nine fellowships awarded. The Fellows come from nine different countries, including Ethiopia, Pakistan, Fiji, Tuvalu, Congo, Chile, Costa Rica, India, and Venezuela. Four Fellows will attend IETF 72 in Dublin, Ireland, from 27 July - 1 August 2008, and five Fellows will attend IETF 73, in Minneapolis, USA, from 16 - 21 November 2008.

“The ISOC Fellowships to the IETF are a key part of our work to help build technical leadership and participation in less developed countries,” says Karen Rose, ISOC’s Director of Education and
Programs. “The next billion users of the Internet will come predominantly from the developing world. The Fellowship program helps ensure that technical experts in these regions have the knowledge and experience needed to more fully participate in global Internet standards development.”

“ISOC is very pleased to acknowledge Afilias, Google, Intel, and Microsoft for their investment,” notes Drew Dvorshak, Senior Manager for Organisation Members. “The Fellowship is an important opportunity for business leaders to benefit from ISOC’s global resources by funding a unique and effective effort to develop the next generation of technologists. We are actively seeking additional Fellowship sponsors as the potential for this program is enormous and a key part of enabling the emergence of ‘the next billion’ users.”

The selected ISOC IETF Fellows are:

IETF 72, Dublin, Ireland

• Tamrat Bayle, Ph.D. (Ethiopia) is an Assistant Professor at the College of Telecommunications & Information Technology, where he has been using IETF protocols in his varied research projects.
• Hugo Salgado (Chile) is an application developer at NIC Chile (.CL) and is interested in Domain Name System Security Extensions and IPv6 issues after having previously followed the Cross Registry Information Service Protocol mailing lists.
• Alejandro Acosta (Venezuela) is an Internetworking Coordinator for British Telecom. He has been following the IETF Discussion list for many years and is interested in the IPv6 Maintenance and TCP Maintenance & Minor Extensions working groups.
• Kumar Saurabh (India) is currently a Senior Technical Leader at Sonus Networks. He has specific interest in the Session Initiation Protocol working group and had contributed to the Media Gateway Control working group for over four years.

IETF 73, Minneapolis, USA

• Jean Philemon Kissangou (Congo) is currently employed by DRTVnet and has been following the IETF IPv6 working groups discussions for some time.
• Hamid Mukhtar (Pakistan) is a graduate student at Ajou University (South Korea) and has co-authored an Internet Draft for the IPv6 over Low Power WPAN working group and also follows the Mobility Extensions for IPv6 working group mailing list.
• Terry Rupeni (Fiji) is the Network Analyst at the University of the South Pacific where his work is closely aligned with the IETF working groups in the Internet and Routing areas.
• Tenanoia Veronica Simona (Tuvalu) is employed by Tuvalu Telecommunication Corporation as an IT Manager. Her interests include the IP over Cable Data Network, Mobility Extensions for IPv6, and IP
  Telephony working groups.
• Ing. Carlos A. Watson Carazo (Costa Rica) is interested in Domain Name System Operations, Multicast Security, and IPv6 Maintenance working groups as they directly impact his work at NIC Costa Rica (.CR).

ISOC is very pleased to acknowledge the corporate sponsorship from Afilias, Google, Intel, and Microsoft in support of these IETF Fellowships.

The CSO June monthly publications shows that the 2006 LCMS IV collected information on information communication and technology (ICTs) facilities which included radios, televisions, video player, land phone, cellular phone, satellite dish and decoder, computer and internet connection.

Analysis by rural and urban shows that, ownership of a radio, cell phone and television was more in urban areas that in rural areas. The proportion of households that owned a radio in urban areas was 65.8 percent compared to 50.1 percent in rural areas while that of those who owned a cell phone was 53 and 8.8 percent in urban and rural areas respectively. The proportion of households that owned a television was 54.6 percent in urban areas compared to 7.8 percent in rural areas.

The survey also revealed that there has been an increase in the proportion of households that own cell phone while those that owned land telephone lines declined. The proportion of household that own a cell phone increased from 10.8 percent in 2004 to 24.2 percent in 2006. The proportion of household that own land telephone line declined from 5.2 percent to 1.2 percent during the same period.

Analysis of ICT assets by sex of household head shows that male headed household own more ICT facilities that female headed households. About 62 percent of male headed households and 35.5 percent of female headed households own a radio. The results also indicate that 26% male headed household owned a cell phone than 18.4 percent female headed households.

Polly Gaster Eduardo Mondlane University Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Director asked if there were other sources apart from Brazil where they could access relevant content for their network as most online databases where in English and French.

Gaster explained that they get a lot of resources information from Brazilian websites which have been of great help in terms of information provision for their networks. She explained that equitable access to education and communication and the means to produce and disseminate information were key factors in social-economic development and civic participation. Local activities were reinforced through building horizontal and multi-directional networks- national, regional and international.

Over 50 of Mozambiques’s 128 districts already enjoy the benefits of community radios, community multimedia centres or telecentres and that the number was growing every year. She said they were providing local access to information and communication tools, the opportunity for citizens to acquire new skills, and services for local institutions and civil society.

This factors was discussed during the workshop that was held on Sustainable Rural Telecentres for Africa held in Lusaka last week.

ZAA-ICT Executive Coordinator, Dean Mulozi said there was need to have this network to help support the information development of rural telecentres. He said they were facilitating the development of the SATNET.
A visit to Chinyunyu Community Multipurpose Telecentre in rural Zambia showed that when a community is involved in the setting up of a Telecentre the people embrace the centre as their own. Set up in 2006, the centre last year installed solar energy and a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) with the help of UNIDO which has enabled farmers to charge their mobile phone barriers and have access to the internet.

It is important that the centre realizes the money that it pays to the Communications Authority of Zambia as regulators fees and also the monthly subscription for the VSAT connection which is a very big challenge as the centre was in a rural location.

Austin Chilala Head of Kasis Agricultural Training Centre said the centre had received a seven acres of land as a donation to the project from Chief Bunda Bunda. The steering committee now plans to put up demonstration plots for the farmers and housing for stuff.

It is clear that Chinyunyu Telecentre does not need to exist in isolation but needs to learn from other telecentres are sustaining themselves which makes initiatives of setting up SATNET relevant.

There is also need of creating an electronic network before creating a physical network as this is very vital now that telecentres are being encouraged to provide internet services to their communities.

So far feedback from Chinyunyu farmers include that fact that they had learnt how to process chili and expand their fish farming activities as they accessed information from Chinyunyu Telecentre.

Press reports show that Deputy Minister of Communications and Transport, Mubika Mubika said this in Siavonga on Monday June 17 when he opened the Southern African Postal Operators Association annual general meeting. Mubika urged Postal administration to reform their traditional operation led organizations and adopt customer and service led organizations.

For Zambia it should be noted that, in 1994, Parliament enacted the Telecommunications Act, which resulted in the restructuring of the telecommunications sub sector by separating the Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC) into two commercial entities which are the Zambia Telecommunications Limited (ZAMTEL) and the Zambia Postal Services Corporation (ZAMPOST). In additional this included the removal of regulatory functions from the PTC; thus resulting in the establishment of an autonomous regulatory agency, the Communications Authority of Zambia (CAZ). On the other hand regulation of the postal sub sector was still carried out by the Ministry of Communications and Transport through a Licensing committee comprising various stakeholders.

Postal and courier services are mainly provided by ZAMPOST. The Corporation covers the country through a network of about 116 Post offices, 64 Sub Post Offices and 55 Postal agencies.

A large percentage of the 72 districts have an operational post office. In addition, there are private courier services, which are concentrated along Livingstone Copperbelt corridor for delivery of parcels. However, some private courier operators now service provincial centres as well.

In relation to provision of ICTs, ZAMPOST offers a money transfer service called “SWIFT CASH” which has enabled many people within the country to receive and send money. Many Zambians are happy are please with the services as it is an alternative to Western Union a money transfer service which many Zambians now use to receive and send money to people living out of the country.