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The side-picture depicts a smiling Dipo Tepede, in the middle, with my company’s business partner after a business dinner. The two guys in the picture represent VSNL international (formally known as Teleglobe before the merger} and it was in this meeting that I came across the word BlackBerry

I wonder what the world will be like without telecommunication; the whole talk of globalization, cultural integration, cultural awareness, international business, etc will not be in focus. I wonder if a writer like me, that reaches about 50 countries daily including Israel, UAE, Uzbekistan, Tanzania, South Africa, etc could accomplish. Without telecoms, development in all strata, sector, government, business, country will be at a standstill. Telecom is a major player in world’s development; this is why I have created a segment in Dipo Tepede.POeT called the Telecoms Story to inform my readers on the latest development in field of telecommunication as it pertains to Nigeria.

Nigeria is a developing country and it is visible to an average Nigerian the effect of the entrance of wireless service providers to the country. A cursory look at a cross-section of the Nigerian socio-economy reveals telecommunication as the industry with maximum impact on peoples’ lives – a typical example is the lunch of GSM (an open standard telephony platform) in 2001 which revolutionized the socio-economic status of Nigeria by reducing unemployment, creating entrepreneurs, improving business processes, encouraging globalization, etc.

What is BlackBerry? What is the impact of BlackBerry to an average Nigerian?

BlackBerry is a wireless handheld mobile device that supports push e-mail, wap services, internet services, telephony, instant messaging and short message services. The difference between blackberry and PDA phone format is real time e-mail service delivery. It is basically for roaming employees to connect to their company’s e-mail where ever they are. For personal services, the subscriber hooks up with the e-mail service of the wireless provider instead of the companies. Whenever a mail hits your inbox, it is monitored by a BlackBerry Exchange Server, which transfers the e-mail to your wireless provider’s data network, which in turn delivers the message to your handheld device instantly. This is the theory behind the push e-mail. The use of the BlackBerry Exchange Server is to give companies the flexibility of using different wireless provider therefore employing the “Least Cost Route” strategy.

The concept was created by a Canadian company called Research In Motion (RIM) and the name “BlackBerry”, which could be passed for the name of a genus of rose, was derived from the button of the handheld device that looks like strawberry. The keyboard of the device has the QWERTY look and a track wheel to navigate. The device could be connected to TCP/IP through a component called Data Network Service (DNS). This allows for custom application development using data streams on BlackBerry devices based on the Sun Java platform. I hope the network provider in Nigeria will offer a flat billing system which aid companies to provide intranet services, chat services, etc to their employees on this handheld device as the traffic will bypass tolls.

The advantage to Nigeria includes better productivity derived from effective business processes, social communication like Yahoo Messenger client and Google Talk client and a powerful medium for the deaf community in Nigeria…………….
Which company is likely to bring BlackBerry to Nigeria?

Answers should be trapped in the comment box. The winner will get a free copy of POeT’s Manual for Aptitude Test Solutions.