We plan to spread Wi Fi cloud over UNILAG

MD, AMB Multiserve, Soji Romeo, when he briefed TECHNOLOGY TIMES Editors

MD, AMB Multiserve, Soji Romeo speaks with TECHNOLOGY TIMES Editors on a project under way to provide wireless Internet access to the University of Lagos during an executive briefing session at our corporate office in Ikeja, Lagos. Excerpts:


We learnt about your partnership with the University of Lagos in providing wireless network around the campuses. What is behind this initiative?
Basically, it’s a public private partnership (PPP) initiative whereby our company, AMB Multiserve Limited, has entered into agreement with the university to build a wireless network around the three campuses: Akoka, Idi-Araba and School of Radiography, Yaba.
Basically, we have Wi-Fi across these three campuses and we are funding it upfront for the university and then operating it commercially to generate returns which we would share with the university.

Does it mean that use of the network would be available only to commercial subscribers within the campuses’ environment?
What it means is that the wireless network is open to what we describe as the members of the campus community. It is not opened to the general public. It is only open to registered members such as staffs, students, members of staff and students’ families and people who reside within the community.
For instance, a staff’s cousin, can access the Wi-Fi as long as they are registered and they subscribe to the service.
The beauty of it is that since it is a wireless network one can sit anywhere, whether in a hall of residence, sports centre, under a tree or walking around the campus and would be able to access the network and access the Internet.
I would explain another aspect of the project. What we have taken into considerations at the moment is that students need to have a place where they can access the Internet free.
So what we are going to do is to provide seven resource centres across the three campuses. Those resource centres are cable network, not as if the wireless network wouldn’t cover there, but the idea is to help registered students who don’t have wireless devices to be able to have access to the Internet. Those of them who have wireless devices can access the Internet at a reduced rate.
What we have done is to make sure that the rate which the university community would be paying is low compared to what would be offered outside, like the cybercafés.

The Senate Building, University of Lagos

What’s the level of coverage of this wireless network? Often times, you find out that the signal strength is not stable within a particular location. How does your network address such issue?
It is merged all round to make sure that the connection is not distorted. For instance, if you are travelling between your hall of residence to your lecture room or probably in a car, the connection will still be stable.
But do understand that moving from Akoka to Idi-Araba campus there is no wireless coverage. We are building and expanding and we will get to that point where we would have such coverage.

As this is a PPP initiative, in your initial market assessment, have you seen any correlation between demand and probably, appetite for Internet service among students or the university community?
Yes. We are in partnership with the university, and the university can testify to that, on the amount of access that is available to the university community especially the students.
We have done our market survey and we are able to make sure that students are able to access the Internet at any given time.
We are working in partnership with them. We are not going to set up or create an infrastructure that will not deliver access. There are other initiatives that are going on in the university, including laptop ownership schemes for the students. So, we are working with the university to ensure that the infrastructure are made available for the community to be able to access the Internet.

How does the laptop or computer ownership scheme integrate into the entire framework of your ongoing project? Is it also going to be affordable for students?
It is something I regard as complementary. The university is looking into it because we are not directly involved. The university has partnered with Microsoft and some computer OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) on this project and it is being sponsored by one of the banks and I think the take-up is very high.
The last time I checked, about 2000 students have taken advantage of the scheme and there are plans to do another batch of 7000. That is going on in line with what we are doing. We see it and we encourage it. The good thing is for them to be able to access our network. Better for the students, better for us and the entire community.

Concerns about security and abuse are issues when people talk about students surfing the Internet. What safeguards are you putting in place?
Like I said earlier, it’s a closed network. It is available to only students that are registered which means every access is logged and traceable to a particular individual. That ensures that any crime that is committed by anybody can be traced easily.
The other thing is that we are working with our other partners, Cyberspace, our technical partners, to design and implement up-to-date security solutions on the network.
For instance, we are very concerned about abuse and people going to the wrong sites. That would not only be traceable but students would be denied access to such sites. This is one of the things we have considered on this project.

Talking about logging and tracking access, how technically is that achievable? Is there any passcode or ID with which the students or the community would use to log on to your network?
If we take students for instance, all access from them will be based on their Matriculation number. Everybody has a domain identifier which will enable him or her to gain access to the Internet. Now we are going to have obviously a user database. The user database will include all registered students which will be updated annually. All young employees and registered members within the university will also be updated on that user database. So, if you want to be a user you would necessarily need to have your own domain identifier, your own generated passcode in order to gain access to the Internet.

Does it mean that an outsider can not access the network while on a temporary visit to the campuses?
Unfortunately, the person may not be able to access the Internet. Very informally, say you must gain access. Your cousin may be able to log on and allow him or her to check mail but if anything happens within that session, you would bear the responsibility for the cousin. You as an external person into the university will not be able to gain access to the Internet.
We understand that it’s a university and understand that there will be things like conferences, seminars and others. Knowing that people will come. We’ve had an agreement by which all such people will be granted temporary membership of the user data base and they will be able access for a specific period of time.
So, yes, there will be cases where some people can go online based on the period of being users, say for three weeks, two weeks or three days, after which access expires.

How are you going to cope with the issue of power?
The arrangement we had with the school is that private power will be provided by the university to operate our network operating centre. We also have backups, we have UPS and inverter. Our inverter is powerful enough to sustain operation for a couple of days. Of course, the school has its own backups too and generator and we expect that will be the primary source of power and then we have our other backups too.

You did say something like the cost is cheap compared to what is obtainable from cybercafés. Can you be specific on how much the students will be paying for these services?
I don’t want to pre-empt this at this point in time, but I know that for instance, the people who buy N100 per hour at the cybercafé will give you a more convenient access from any where but within your home it will give you less than that.
What I can say is that our price plan will have different options. There will be options of few hours, maybe, four hours per day, there will be a monthly and weekly. It is what people can afford, but what we know is that, it will be cheaper.
This is why we are making it close. We don’t want to send out people and apart from the security, we want to make sure that only the members of the university actually benefit from this project.

How many megabits per second (Mbps) is this wireless network running on?
We have made provision for up to 12 Meg. So, basically depending on the topography, when we were doing our test run, we had 1meg but now it’s gone up to about 4Meg and it will go up and up. We have made provision to commit maximum of 12MBps which at this point in time is very generous compared to what is elsewhere.

Why I asked the question is that some people in this environment download information with plenty of graphics and pictures.
Yes. That is correct. We are aware of that and we have software that we have implemented which will restrict people from unnecessary downloads. It’s a university environment and my own understanding is that a lot of downloads that people do in this environment are  graphics and text. But I quite agree that there will be some department that will need to make graphics-related downloads. We’ll make provisions for them. In terms of people going to download music and so forth, we will limit it and we will use software to be able to achieve that.
There is one particular thing I want you to understand about this project because it’s not just the main driving force of this project, it not about the commercialization.
What we are doing for the university is to partner with Cisco, one of the main drivers of this project, to build a communication backbone across the university which will offer the university the ability to enhance their many experiences in terms of being able to run voice, data, video and more.
The usage is limited so that you can carry out an obligation which people can work on. And the other thing is that the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) is supposed to operate for a period of seven years. Within those seven years, part of the income that will be generated will be reinvested on the network so that the network is updated and upgraded throughout the term of the project.