Good writers have the target readers in mind when they write an article, as opposed to just focusing on what they want to say. When people read an article they are looking for what’s in it for them, and if they cannot see this quickly they will move on.

So, when you are planning your article and doing your research, and while you are writing it make sure you identify with the target readers. Put yourself in their shoes and anticipate what would interest them, and all the questions they are likely to want answered as they are reading what you have written.

While going through this process, remember that you will need to consider the lowest common denominator of the audience. Otherwise you will run the risk of losing half the readers because they don’t understand what you are saying.

Speak in conversational terms, get to the point quickly, speak plain English and don’t try to be clever with words. In his book On Writing, Steven King says people use smart words because they are a little bit ashamed of their simple ones.

Think about how you would say what you are writing if you were having a verbal conversation with your readers. Make sure everything you are writing in your article is articulate and concise and that it will create a clear picture in the readers’ minds that leaves no room for misinterpretation or misunderstanding.

When you have finished writing your article read it through objectively from the reader’s point of view and ensure that every sentence answers the question, “So what?” It is also important to ensure there are no gaps in the information you have written that can be filled with assumptions or leave room for speculation.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Most writers suffer from writer’s block at one time or another, but there are ways to overcome this. When I ask participants of the article writing workshops I run what their greatest challenges are with their writing, many of them say they always get stuck on the opening sentence.

When I first became a journalist in the early 1980s, we had to write our articles on typewriters. In the open plan editorial office you would regularly hear the “zzzzzip” sound of journalists, including me, pulling sheet after sheet of paper out of their typewriters to throw them in the bin and start all over again.

But I was fortunate to have a good editor, and with his help, and by pestering other more experienced writers, I picked up some good tips. One day my editor heard me sighing as I sat staring blankly at the keys of my typewriter. “What’s the matter Jennigay?” he said. I told him I was stuck, and he asked me, “What are you trying to say?” So I told him, and he said, “Well that’s your intro, isn’t it?”

The lesson I learnt here is that often when verbalising what one wants to say before writing it the words come out more naturally and conversationally. Writers often fall into the trap of getting so tied up with trying to be too clever with their written words instead of keeping it simple and getting to the point that they complicate things unnecessarily for themselves and for the reader.

Steven King put it very well in his book, On Writing, when he said people make the mistake of using smart words because they are too ashamed of their simple ones.

Another tip is not to get married to your opening sentence, but to start somewhere, even in the middle of the article. Think of your first sentence as a hook to hang your story on that can be changed, repositioned, or deleted at any time. This takes the pressure off, and sometimes when you get to the end of the article and read it through objectively you will find that you can do without the original first sentence all together.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

The recession poses major challenges for courier companies because they need to process big volumes of deliveries at a low price per item in a fiercely competitive market. It is also easy to move from one courier company to another, because there is very little difference between the services they offer.

“This drives prices down,” says Ken Light, executive head of SkyNet. He says employee equity is also an issue in the courier industry, which is dominated by white males at all levels.

However, courier companies have started employing industrial engineers that are equity candidates, and filling supply chain consulting roles with women. He says Skynet now stipulates that the owner drivers it uses must be black and 35% of their business must be owned by women.

He says the industry is also grappling with the fact that it has to reduce its carbon emissions, but it does not yet have a green charter. Industry players are also looking at moving to liquid gas, but do not currently have the infrastructure to do it, says Light.

“We also envision using electrical vehicles in high density areas in the future.” He says route planning is another area in which local courier companies need to improve. Global players take route planning to the nth degree, with some of them instructing their drivers never to turn across traffic because it causes delays, says Light.

Eddie Vosloo, CEO of Dawn Wing, says when the points demerit system of the AARTO regulations is implemented, it will have serious implications for the courier industry. He says courier companies will need to have technology in place that checks their drivers’ demerit point status and links that with the state of repair of vehicles before they go out on the road.

The demerit status of sales and support staff and managers will also need be monitored to ensure that they are legally compliant. “Having staff perform duties on the road while under suspension will involve mutual accountability should an accident occur,” says Vosloo.

Graeme Lazarus, Joint MD of RAM Hand-to-Hand Couriers, says road congestion was
one of the major concerns in the courier industry last year. However, with the improvement to the arterial roads and highways, this has changed, and the focus has now moved to the toll roads.

“We expect the new toll road infrastructure to have a major financial impact on us, although it is difficult to assess the cost at this stage,” says Lazarus. He says crime continues to be a major issue for courier operators.

However, he says RAM has reduced the risk of pilferage and hijacking by equipping its vehicles with locking mechanisms that are electronically activated from its control centre when the vehicle leaves any premises. “This is just one of the security measures we have taken.”

Gary Marshall, CEO and chairman of the SA Express Parcel Association says the Gauteng road tolls will have a direct impact on courier companies, and the government is not talking to the industry about this. “But the money has been spent and has to be recovered.”

Everything that has a logistics element will be affected by the tolls and how efficiently they are collected. The issue of the further deterioration of secondary roads due to traffic avoiding the toll roads is another major concern.

Marshall says some changes to the Civil Aviation Act have also been proposed relating to the screening of goods for hazardous contents. These include changes to the qualification requirements of the screeners that check the contents of goods being shipped and the specification of the equipment used in the screening process.

“But in this case, the government department concerned consulted with the courier industry long before the act came in, and they continue to listen to us,” he says.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

It is impossible to write a good article if the writer does not have a good understanding of the topic they are writing about. To write an interesting article requires not taking anything on face value, making assumptions, or just regurgitating information found on some obscure blog.

When researching topics or interviewing spokespeople, writers must keep probing deeper and deeper, asking questions like, Why? When? Where? Which, Who? How? This is the only way to really understand a trend or get to the root of an issue and all the influencing factors that revolve around it.

Similarly, when supporting a statement with a statistic, if the writer understands and can convey the possible implications of the statistic – the messages in the data, this information could enrich the content of their article.

If the content of an article is superficial, it will be obvious to the reader that the writer does not know what they are talking about. This will harm the writer’s credibility, it will cause the reader much frustration, and it will be a waste of time writing the article.

Writers need to ensure the content of their articles has been well researched, is factually correct, and is interesting from the reader’s perspective and not just from theirs. They also need to ask themselves if the topic they are writing about will be of interest to anyone, apart from them.

Anyone writing articles, or any other written content, should think about what their target readers would be interested in hearing about and not just what they want to tell them. This means anticipating the questions readers might want answered.

As a journalist, I receive hundreds of press releases, and more than 90% of them contain information that is mainly of interest to the company that is sending them out.  For example, all too often companies write about new products and services they are launching and fail to mention how they work or how they will benefit those who might be interested in buying them.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

A major objective when writing an article is to attract the reader’s attention and keep it throughout. To achieve this, get to the point quickly without any preamble, and make strong statements that are clear and concise.

Make sure you have not left any questions in the mind of the reader, by applying the “So what?” principal to every statement you write and ensuring this question is answered in the next sentence or two.

Understand the target audience, and consider the lowest common denominator among those who might be reading the article. For example, when writing an article that is going to be published on the internet, remember that anyone might stumble across it while searching for information to enlighten or entertain them.

Have a conversation with the reader as you are writing your article, and try verbalising what you want to say, or visualising how you would say it if you were telling someone about it face to face, before you write it down, instead of trying to think of the smartest words to use.

Three important words to remember when writing articles are clarify, qualify, and quantify. Clarify what you are saying by making statements that are clear, articulate and complete and cannot be misunderstood or interpreted in different ways by different readers.

If you leave gaps in the information you are writing the reader will make his or her own assumptions as to what you meant, depending on their understanding of the topic, their background, experience, culture, personality, and other human factors.

Using examples is a powerful way to qualify your statements and put them in context by creating a clear picture in the reader’s mind. Quantifying your statements with supporting statistics will clarify what you are writing still further by giving the reader a measure, a point of reference, a place to start.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Many South African courier companies are extending their reach into Africa, and see it as a major potential growth area. Tim Steel, MD for South Africa at TNT Express, says global customers are eyeing Africa as an attractive emerging market, with enquiries coming in every week.

“We are currently consulting with our Chinese customers as to how best to supply their goods into Africa.” He says one of the challenges is that Africa is made up of 55 countries that all have different ways of doing things.

So it is imperative to have an efficient supply chain into Africa, with the ability to ensure shipments move smoothly through borders. Steel says TNT has created an express cross border road network across southern Africa.

He says there is a move afoot in Africa to link key clusters of countries. “The east African community is moving to open borders to allow movement of goods between countries without customs clearance.”

He says this includes countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. Graeme Lazarus, Joint MD of RAM Hand-to-Hand Couriers says there is a growing demand for courier services to other parts of Africa.

However, it is no good venturing into these markets without understanding them and being sure of generating sufficient volumes to ensure viability. Lazarus says international courier companies have the advantage of being able to push volumes of business into Africa through their global customer base and international affiliations.

He says RAM has been operating in African markets like Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Lesotho and Swaziland for about five years. Berco Express is currently delivering to most southern African countries by road or airfreight, and has recently been extending its reach further up into Nigeria and Ghana, says MD Andy van der Velde.

The company has recently been acquired by global logistics company Aramex, which has a presence in 14 countries in Africa, although not in the southern regions. “Berco has been doing business in southern Africa for 10 years, and we will now be expanding our operations into other parts of the continent through Aramex,” says van der Velde.

Ken Light, executive head for SkyNet, says the growing economic interest in Africa is creating potential for setting up domestic networks across the continent, as has already happened in SA. He says with the economic issues in the US and UK, Africa is being viewed as the next big frontier for trading, after India and China.

This is apparent from the interest being shown by major overseas and SA retail chains like Walmart-controlled Massmart to expand into Africa. “Courier companies can follow the retailers and suppliers that are moving up there,” says Light.

He says Skynet is planning to establish domestic courier networks in other parts of Africa at the rate of one a year, and has already done so in Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland. Dawn Wing CEO Eddie Vosloo says the company has put in place the African Distribution Alliance (ADA) network, through which members have access to one another’s distribution networks across Africa, with agreed service levels and the ability to have access to a worldwide network.

He says there has been a recent decline in the demand for courier deliveries into Africa through SA. This is partly because coastal African countries have upgraded their harbours to handle the movement of goods by sea, and the inland roads have been improved.

For example, there is now a highway across Namibia to Botswana, and another from Mozambique to Zimbabwe, says Vosloo. “It reduces the cost of shipping by not coming through SA.”

He says Durban is the most expensive port in the world to bring in shipments, and neighbouring countries are taking advantage of this.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Examples are a powerful way to clarify what you are saying when writing any type of article, because human beings don’t think in words. They think in pictures. So making strong statements in your articles and then qualifying them with examples, will help to create a clearer picture in the minds of the target audience you are writing for.

Examples will also help to put your viewpoints, or those of a spokesperson, into context. For instance, when writing an article in which you are promoting a concept, idea, approach, methodology, product, or service, it is useful to include brief examples of how it has benefited those who are already using it or have applied it.

In another scenario, you might want to get the message across that your company operates across different sectors. In this case, you could use specific examples of how customers in three or four sectors have benefited from the solution you are promoting, in different ways.

If you don’t want to mention customer names, you can just say something like, “A customer of ours in the retail sector….etc.” The examples will still be useful to the reader, and will help to get your message across in the article you are writing.

Examples of how a product or service works, and how it can benefit the target audience will also help to create a clearer picture. Varied examples can also be useful. For instance, you might want to get across the message in your article that the product you are promoting can be used in different ways, in which case you can give examples that will illustrate this in words.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Every article should have an objective behind it, it should focus on a clearly defined topic, and it should be written with a specific audience in mind. Without a clearly defined topic, you are likely to end up with too many ideas in your article, which will confuse your audience, and writing it will be a major challenge. Similar problems will arise if you don’t have a clear objective.

Once you have established these basics, put yourself in the audience’s shoes and think about what they would be interested in knowing about the topic, as opposed to just what you want to tell them.

It is worth remembering that your audience may be made up of people that have varying social and educational backgrounds, perceptions, cultures, and levels of understanding of the topic you are writing about.

Some may also have a limited vocabulary and grasp of the English language. This is  particularly applicable with articles you are planning to publish on a website, because anyone could stumble across them while searching for information.

It is therefore wise to write the article in plain English with the lowest possible common denominator of the audience in mind, and not use unexplained terminology or assume any prior knowledge of the topic.

Have a conversation with the reader, making sure you haven’t left any questions in their minds, because if you do this will frustrate them, and they will not enjoy your article. To test this out, once you have written your article, you can apply the So what? technique.

Read the article through and ask “So what?” after each sentence and make sure you have answered this question in the next sentence or two.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training, communication skills, and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Soon after we got together in 1986, my partner bought me David Attenborough’s Life on Earth (The Reader’s Digest augmented and enlarged edition). I was bowled over. It was undoubtedly my best birthday present ever. Better than my first little radio, my bicycle and my Volkswagen Beetle.

It went deeper and further into that wonderful world that Attenborough was bringing to South African TV audiences just then, opening up and explaining the biggest topic of all – from the Big Bang all the way to me, right here, right now.

After 20, my partner has bettered that gift. For my last birthday I got a Kindle. I am in love. My Kindle goes with me – everywhere. I read more than I did even in my teens, when I huddled up with my book and a torch under the blankets after lights-out. And I read what I want to read, instead of what is available in the bookshops.

Even while I was waiting for the arrival of my little package from Amazon, I Googled and found the best novels of the century, the best fiction ever written, the best novels in English, all the Pulitzer Prizewinners, the winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction, and I created my ideal reading list. When my Kindle arrived, I had already downloaded the greatest part of my reading list, partly from Amazon on my Kindle account, but mostly from Project Gutenberg (a group of volunteers who make electronic copies of public domain books available for free).

Having been educated in an Afrikaans school and university, I am seriously under-read when it comes to great classic literature. I am now diving into Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Edith Wharton (don’t you just love The Age of Innocence?) and more in a feeding frenzy. For light relief I charged through the latest John le Carré, because waiting for me was Mary Glickman’s Home In The Morning and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which everyone’s been telling me to read.

I am also reading deeper. With Wikipedia and a dictionary just a click away, I easily find information when I want to understand where this town is, what this word means, what happened in history at this time. Why is the author so derogatory about this character who has decorated his home with this artwork?

Why, let’s click and have a quick look at the painting on Wikipedia. Wikipedia also offers me comments, criticisms and backgrounds to the author and the books. All on my Kindle. I love reading in coffee shops. Whenever someone at a table close by irritates me, I pop in my earphones and have my favourite jazz or a bit of Mozart to enhance my coffee and Conrad.

A man walked past one day, studied me for a moment, and then crinkled up his face as if in a moment of exquisite enjoyment, clutched his heart and smiled at me. Yeah, that’s the life… Criticism? Just that copyright laws prevent me from getting some of the books I want from Amazon.

But then I can get them from other suppliers, and use free software from the web to change the format from ‘epub’ to ‘mobipocket’. Some people tell me they would never adapt to an e-reader. “I just need the feel and smell of a real book,” they say. I say, hey, read on your Kindle, and keep a book next to your bed for an occasional sniff.

These include a number of the latest advances in microscopy—from a pocket microscope that can be connected to a cell phone’s optics to tools that smash the resolution limitations of traditional scopes, a tool that measures light exposure and circadian rhythms, and a first-of-its-kind 360-degree optical imager.

Lucas, a pocket-sized microscope that weighs less than 50g, uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts, costs as little as $10, and can be attached to a cell phone’s camera, making it ideal for diagnosing disease in isolated, developing countries.

It illuminates cells with an inexpensive light-emitting diode, captures the shadows they cast, and then processes and recreates the image using an algorithm run on a remote computer. The translucent cells cast textured shadows that can reveal internal cell features such as malaria parasites, and can image very large areas.

Then there is the battery powered, dime-sized Dimesimeter circadian watch, which can be worn as a wristband, pendant, or pinned on clothing, may offer researchers insights into how disrupting circadian rhythms affects human physiology, behavior, and disease, and it costs $100.

The Dimesimeter contains optical sensors and accelerometers that measure both the light exposure and activity of the person wearing it. The device then transmits data wirelessly to a docking station, which can be linked to a computer.

By quantifying the amount of light that people are exposed to, it can provide new insights into a lot of diseases, and has been used in a study that determined optimal home lighting conditions to improve sleep efficiency in Alzheimer’s patients.

The Dimesimeter’s optical setup consists of red, green, and blue light detectors that measure light exposure of the subject. Through post processing, researchers can determine the amount circadian light (the light that modulates the biological clock) entering the eye.

The full story of the 2011 Top Ten Innovations, with pictures, is published on the Scientist’s website.

Good writers probe deeper and deeper into their topic, asking questions like: Why did this happen? What were the influences behind this? Where, when and why did this all start? What are the origins of this trend? Who will be affected, and how will they be affected? Which of the various opinions about this is the most credible? Is the source of the information reliable and knowledgeable?

It is difficult for article writers to ask leading questions of the spokespeople they are interviewing that will provide rich content for their articles if they do not understand the topic. If article writers only have a superficial or fragmented understanding of the topics they are writing about, it will be reflected in the articles they are writing.

When this happens, it will confuse the reader, and leave a lot of unanswered questions in their minds. As a result they will stop reading it and go and look for another article that is more enlightening, and is obviously written by an article writer who knows what they are writing about.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist, with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for the South African daily newspaper Business Day.  She also runs writing skills, media training, and communication courses, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing press releases, which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Did you know that Steve Jobs did not invent the latest and greatest Apple products? It was British born Jonathan (Jony) Ive, who is to be knighted by the Queen.

Among other things, Ive is credited with designing the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac, and was the lead designer behind various MacBook versions including the MacBook Air. He is currently senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, a position he attained after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

Ive was appointed a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the UK New Year Honours and will in future bear the title of Sir Jonathan Ive.

The honour is being bestowed on him in recognition for raising design standards in consumer, industrial and professional goods and for his championing of British design.

Ive was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006 New Year Honours for services to the design industry.

In another new year story, a 29 year old prototype of a fixed line phone/tablet device that was developed in 1983 has been unearthed from Apple’s archives.

The prototype was designed by German born Hartmut Esslinger, who is also credited with designing the early Apple IIc computer, which was launched in 1988.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology writer, and she runs media training and article writing skills courses. She is also the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not? – a guide to writing press releases and other articles, which can be downloaded free from her website.

Only an experienced journalist will be able to give spokespeople insight into what the media look for in a good spokesperson, and provide them with the skills to become one.

The right form of media training will equip spokespeople with techniques that will help them anticipate any eventuality in any interview scenario, prepare accordingly, organise their thoughts, and share knowledge clearly and concisely in a two-way discussion with a media interviewer.

Anyone who interacts with the media or is planning to do so will benefit from media training. Natural spokespeople do exist, but they are few and far between. Interestingly, these spokespeople are usually the first to jump at the chance of honing their media interaction skills.

At the other end of the scale are those who spurn the suggestion of media training because they consider themselves to be great spokespeople already with no room for improvement.

Meanwhile they are often the worst spokespeople to interview, due to their inflated egos, arrogant, know-it-all attitude, superficial knowledge, and a tendency to speak at the journalist instead of engaging in a two-way conversation.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist with 25 years experience, and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training, writing skills and communication courses, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing press releases, which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

There is much activity on the go across Africa in the race to build terrestrial fibre networks to connect towns and cities to the increasing number of undersea cables that are landing along the east and west coasts.“But this is not happening as quickly as it was envisaged,”  says Howard Earley, chief operating officer at Plessey Group.

He says there was a lot of hype about how the undersea cables would increase speeds and bring down costs. But internet connectivity services can only deliver as fast as the slowest point in the network.

In South Africa, progress is being hindered by environmental regulations that involve a lot of red tape, which did not exist a few years ago. For example If the cable needs to cross any water, or even a dry river bed, this requires approval from the department of water affairs and the relevant local municipality.

To complicate matters still further individual municipalities have different requirements.
“When the first fibre cables were laid, the infrastructure builders just went ahead and did it.”

He says environmental issues were one of the factors that delayed the fibre network recently completed by Dark Fibre Africa that runs between Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal. “We dug the trenches and laid the ducting for the fibre for this,” says Earley.

The building of this link required the owner to meet the environmental requirements of 27 municipalities on route. He says Plessey is working on a similar project to lay trenches and ducting for the national network being built by the Neotel, MTN and Vodacom consortium.

Further up Africa, over the past two years Plessey built a large portion of the Trans-Kalahari fibre network, which runs from the SA side of Botswana to Namibia. Other terrestrial fibre projects are underway that will run from Kampala on the east side of Uganda to Mombassa on the east coast of Kenya to link up with the Seacom and EASSy undersea cables.

Fibre infrastructure projects have also started in Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and Tanzania that will eventually link up with this fibre network. All three operators in Nigeria are planning long distance fibre networks from Lagos or Port Harcourt on the coast to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria inland, says Earley.

An increasing number of fixed line and mobile operators, ISPs and other service providers and their customers are interconnecting through central hubs, or internet exchanges. In line with this global trend, Teraco, has built two of these exchanges, which are located in Cape Town and Johannesburg and it is opening a new facility in Durban in August.

The exchanges consist of a large data centre that is equipped with cooling and heavy duty power supply. Tenants then rent dedicated space and install networking equipment to enable them to interconnect with each other and with their customers.

“We sell space to many ISPs that in turn sell to smaller ISPs,” says Lex van Wyk, MD of Teraco. He says UK company Telehouse were early adopters of this concept 20 years ago and are one of the leaders in this field.

“Some 80% of the world’s internet traffic passes through Telehouse’s internet exchanges.”
Teraco’s Cape Town premises covers 500 square metres of space and the company is looking to expand this by another 1,200 square metres this year.

Its Johannesburg premises covers 1250 square metres of space, which is already fully occupied, and plans are afoot to expand this by another 1000 square metres by the end of the year. Some corporate organisations are also using the exchanges as a disaster recovery site for their own data centres, says van Wyk.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Video conferencing is becoming more viable as the technology improves and bandwidth becomes more affordable. In the early days companies had to install expensive video equipment in their boardrooms, IT staff had to set it up, interoperability between multiple parties was a problem, quality was inconsistent, and it required the use of a dedicated line at a per-minute cost.

But today, businesses can do video conferencing over the internet at a reasonable cost, either by installing the technology themselves or using it on a pay-per-use or prepaid basis, over the internet, and there are plenty of options available. “Skype for Business still works over the public internet, but it provides higher quality video conferencing than the consumer Skype service,” says Wayne Speechly, executive for communications at Internet Solutions.

He says users can connect to the service with a 512 kilobits per second connection, and the Skype server gives them priority over consumer users. Then there is Microsoft’s corporate OCS offering, which can be implemented in-house or used on a hosted basis through a service provider.

Polycom and Tandberg also provide boardroom and executive desktop video conferencing solutions that are designed specifically for this application, says Speechly.  “Having a range of options like this to choose from is great, but it also presents challenges when multiple parties are interacting with each other using different technologies.”

He says to address this issue Internet Solutions has developed Hosted Video Exchange, a service that allows multiple parties using different types of video conferencing to interconnect on a pay per use or subscription basis. Users can also access the IS WebEx hosted video conferencing service and hosted training centre through the exchange, says Speechly.

He says the hosted WebEx service costs R455 a month for the software licence, which is paid by the person or company hosting the conferencing session, and they can invite multiple parties to participate. The party that is hosting the conference also pays a 10 US cents per minute rate for the duration of the session per participant, and each participant pays for their own bandwidth.

Craig Watson, MD of Q-Distribution says hosted video conferencing services are ideal for smaller companies that have 10 to 20 employees that need to communicate on an ad hoc basis across different branches and with customers. He says the Vidyo video conferencing solution costs R5 per minute per user, plus the bandwidth, on a hosted basis, which is viable for small amounts of usage and is cheaper than flying people around.

“But for multiple meetings of a lengthy duration it is more cost effective to install the system in-house.” For 10 concurrent users this would involve a one-off cost of R100,000 for the hardware and software, or R4,000 to R5,000 a month.

“It used to cost R500,000 or more for a boardroom conferencing system, and one of these had to be installed at each location to communicate between branches.” He says to achieve a good quality conferencing experience requires a minimum four megabit per second connection.

Participants also need to be equipped with a good quality webcam, which most of the latest laptops have. “If not, they will need to buy a good quality external webcam, which will cost about R300,” says Watson.

For a good audio quality experience, users also need a headset or external speaker.  “The internal microphone and speaker do not work well together, which causes feedback,” he says.

Companies can use a hosted service on a pay per use basis for a few months to test whether it is sufficient for their needs before looking to install a system in-house, says Watson.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Undersea cables have been in existence for many years, more recently for fibre optics and before that for telephone cables. There about 17 major transatlantic undersea cables linking Europe and the US, with three more serving sub-level routes.

There are also about 16 transpacific cables linking Asia with North America, and some six running up the east and west coasts of Africa, according to Thylan Chetty, West African Cable System (WACS) specialist at Infraco, which is a shareholder in the cable.  Chetty is also the procurement group chairman for WACS.

He says, traditionally, most of the data traffic carried by the Asia to US cables was bound for overseas destinations, but they are increasingly being used to carry data within Asia to support regional economic activity. “The same will happen in Africa.”

Chetty says one of the major challenges with undersea cables is the stringent environmental legislation that has been introduced in South Africa and many other African countries. “There are processes that have to be followed involving local authorities and communities in the relevant countries and sometimes a fee.”

He says landing an undersea cable involves digging a trench in the beach to a manhole, but it is a passive cable that does not contain any fluid. “But from an environmental perspective an undersea cable is classed in the same category as a nuclear power station.”

Telkom is a shareholder in SAT3/WASC/SAFE, the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), and the West African Cable System (WACS), which is expected go live in the first quarter of next year. Johan Meyer, Telkom’s executive for global capacity says having access to three undersea cables locally improves reliability and availability.

“It can take five days to three weeks to repair a break in a cable.” Further afield, Telkom also has stakes in The European India Gateway (EIG) cable, which links Europe, Middle East, North Africa and India, the Columbus III cable, which links Portugal and Spain with the US, and the SEA-ME-WE 3 or South-East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 3 cable.

The 39,000 kilometre SEA-ME-WE 3 undersea cable is the longest in the world, stretching from north Germany to Australia to Japan. Meyer says undersea cables are robust and suppliers typically warrant for them not to have more than two technical failures during their lifespan.

When the depth of the water is less than 1.5 kilometres, undersea cables are vulnerable to fishing trawlers and at depths of 60 to 100 metres they are vulnerable to anchoring activity. “In the early days shark bites were also found in cables at 1.5 kilometre depths,” says Meyer.

He says it was thought that the sharks were attracted by the electro magnetic waves emitted by the cables. So the owners fitted screening over their cables at those depths. But this is now done during the manufacturing process because it is known at what point the cable will reach those depths, says Meyer.

He says other cable vulnerabilities include earthquakes. In 2006, an earthquake in the Pacific, close to Taiwan, damaged five undersea cables in 30 places and the last Japan earthquake took out four.

Meyer says a single undersea cable provides the equivalent capacity to that of all the satellites put together globally. “In this era of broadband communication, those countries without access to undersea cables will be left behind,” he says.

Today, most African countries have access to undersea cables or are in the advanced stages of accessing them through terrestrial links, says Meyer.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Sales of e-book readers have escalated over the past year and online bookstores report that the demand for e-books is souring. In May this year, Amazon announced that sales of e-books for use on its Kindle e-book reader device had exceeded sales of conventional print books.

“We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly,” says Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. He says Amazon has been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle e-books for less than four years.

Recent research by IHS iSuppli indicates that the growing popularity of e-readers has sent the book publishing industry into a long-term decline.“The industry has entered a phase of  disruption that will be as significant as the major changes impacting the music and movie businesses,”  says Steve Mather, principal analyst for wireless, at IHS.

He says supplier shipments of e-book readers, also known as e-readers, are expected to more than triple from 2010 to 2014. But e-readers are under threat from the encroachment of media tablets, which many consumers will use to view e-books.

Over the past 18 months e-reader manufacturers have cut their prices to the point where they are earning near-zero margins. These devices are therefore unlikely to get much cheaper, says Mather.

Research company In-Stat says in a recent report that e-readers still offer the truest reading experience and appeal most to avid readers. But a broader market of consumers want the next mobile device they buy to have multimedia functionality, like web browsing, video, and gaming.

Tablets, like the Apple iPad, are optimised to deliver this kind of multifunction experience, and therefore, represent a stronger opportunity for suppliers and manufacturers alike, it says. The company predicts that shipment volumes of tablets will outpace that of e-readers by the end of this year.

“In fact, e-reader manufacturers will soon begin adding tablet-like devices to their lineups in order to take advantage of the tablet frenzy,” says senior In-stat analyst Stephanie Ethier. She says book seller Barnes & Noble already offers the Color Nook, which is often compared to a tablet.

Google’s iriver Story high definition e-reader recently went on sale in the USA at a recommended retail price of just under $140 and is bound to eventually make its way to SA. The device comes with a high-resolution e-ink screen and a full keyboard and includes wireless access to hundreds of thousands of Google e-books to purchase and more than 3-million for free.

South African online retailer Kalahari.net sells e-book readers and tablet PCs and offers more than 300,000 ebook titles. The company’s head of merchandising, Caroline Nixon, says most e-book readers support printed material that is published in PDF format, and incorporate Epub technology, which allows the flow of text to adjust to the size of the screen of the device.

“With PDF, the text sometimes flows off the screen.” She says, most e-books are now available in both ePub and PDF format.

Kalahari.net has developed a freely downloadable software application that can open both ePub and PDF e-books on e-reader devices, regardless of whether they are protected or not protected. It also provides free applications that allow eBooks purchased from Kalahari.net in ePub or PDF format to be read on an iPad or any Android based tablet device, and provides a similar user experience to that of an e-book reader.

Nixon says free software can also be accessed that allows e-books from any source to be read on a Windows based PC or Apple Mac in e-reader quality. She says iPad users can have a library box on Kalahari.net where they can store all the ebooks they have purchased and access them when they want to read them.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Some 100 registered wireless access service providers across South Africa are providing wireless connectivity services in urban and rural areas where other broadband infrastructure is inadequate or non-existent.

They are doing this by using the unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 spectrum frequencies, which provide speeds up to 100 megabits a second, and linking to other infrastructure providers over longer distances. These entrepreneurial companies provide a varying range of coverage and offer telephony and internet services that in some cases are as much as 40% cheaper than any alternative.

They also often come to the rescue when businesses and consumers find their wired services cut off due to copper cable theft. For years many wireless access providers operated under the radar, until the regulations changed in 2007 and service providers were allowed to apply for a licence to set up their own infrastructure.

Today, collectively, wireless access providers represent the biggest competition to the major service providers and operators, says Steve Akester, CEO of Vlocity. “The mobile operators will not allow us to use their towers.”

Vlocity started setting up wireless networks in the Cape Town area in 2004 to provide services to businesses and consumers that needed immediate connectivity. One of its first customers was a pizza restaurant chain that wanted to broadcast video across 10 outlets and had battled to do it with ADSL.

“It was more difficult to get ADSL connections seven years ago,” says Akester. Since then Vlocity has set up wireless networks that provide last mile connectivity in five of the major provinces, and it is currently setting up networks in Kimberly and Bloemfontein to complete its national coverage.

The company uses Dark Fibre Africa and Neotel’s fibre infrastructure for it’s inter- provincial links and interconnects with ISPs and operators through internet exchanges like Teraco and Africa Internet Exchange. “Our customers can link to each other across the country without leaving our network,” says Akester.

He says much of the company’s infrastructure is in rural areas where there is little or no infrastructure. This includes a network that reaches from Uppington to Kimberly along the Orange River and runs on solar power.

Johan Kruger started Safricom Telecommunications in Potchefstroom in 2006 to provide wireless internet services for farms, small businesses, and university students in the area.
“We cover 80% of the area reaching as far as Randfontein, Westonaria, Carletonville, and Fochville, and we have about 1000 installations.”

The company has also set up wireless hotspots in Potchefstroom for students, which consist of 150 access points that provide coverage over a two square kilometre radius. “Our network also connects to the North West University campus’ network in Potchefstroom allowing students to roam between the two,” says Kruger.
He says Safricom is also providing wireless access to hotels and guest houses in the area, where a lot of European athletes stay when they come to train. “Potchefstroom has very good sporting facilities and a high altitude, which is good for training.”

The company also provided wireless infrastructure for the TV stations to broadcast the World Cup coverage in the area, says Kruger. Further afield, in Phalaborwa, in 2009, Eric Simpson and Emile van Rooyen set up BushGuru, which provides wireless connectivity to the town and surrounding areas, where there is a major problem with copper theft.

“The copper lines have been stolen so many times in this area that Telkom will not replace them any more and it is not cost effective to put in fibre,” says BushGuru director Kerry Simpson. This is a problem, because with the Phalaborwa gate to the Kruger park on the doorstep, the area attracts a lot of tourists who expect to be able to connect to the internet during their stay.

“A lot of the game lodges in and around the park do not get a cellular signal, so there is no 3G coverage.” She says the company provides Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony services over a wireless network that runs on the unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 gigahertz frequency spectrum.

Customers wanting phone and internet services that have had their fixed line stolen can keep their existing Telkom number and connect to BushGuru wirelessly. “We route calls and data to them over the wireless network for a small monthly fee.”

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

A lot of fibre infrastructure has been been built in metropolitan areas over the past couple of years in South Africa, but it is expensive for service providers to connect customers to it. Some ISPs are leasing infrastructure from Dark Fibre Africa, which lays the cable in its ducting and the service providers light it up and use it to provide services.

But, it can cost more to build a fibre extension to deliver a service to customers’ premises than they can afford or are willing to pay, says Stuart Hardy, MD of Africa Independent Network Exchange. On top of this, lead times for a fibre connection can be as much as a year.

So ISPs are opting to use Neotel’s fibre infrastructure to connect to customers over the last mile or extending their fibre networks with a wireless connection. He says fibre infrastructure needs to be developed further before it will be possible to connect large numbers of customers to it.

Until then wireless, Diginet leased lines and microwave will continue to play an important role, although the need for it will decrease every year in urban areas. He says infrastructure sharing would provide better margins and lower the cost to the customer, but service providers tend to view owning their own infrastructure as a competitive differentiator.

“But the customer does not care who owns the infrastructure,” says Hardy. Craig Holmes, communications and utilities lead for Middle East and Africa at IBM says there are a lot of different players building telecommunication infrastructure, but they are all working in isolation.

He says a lot of telecommunication infrastructure could be shared, as is happening in other countries. “But in SA the mindset of the operators is still to own their own infrastructure.”

IBM provided the infrastructure that supported the scoring, statistics and website transmission of the recent Wimbledon Tournament using high-speed fibre on a on-demand basis. This involved dynamically provisioning systems capability as and when needed from its global data centres.

He says the infrastructure to do this exists in South Africa to do this, but connecting customers to it is a challenge. The regulator Icasa is pushing to unbundle the local loop, which will open up Telkom’s last mile infrastructure to other market players, and is in the final stages of deciding how to do this, says Holmes.

This regulatory process allows multiple licensed operators and service providers to share and provide services over the physical wire connection between the local telephone exchange and the customer, which is known as the local loop. This has already happened in many parts of the world.

Infrastructure sharing is also gaining momentum among the mobile operators and specialist companies are emerging that will take over and manage base stations and let out space to multiple market players. Ten years ago, the number of base stations a mobile operator owned was important, because coverage was a market differentiator.

“So you get competing towers right next to each other,” says Keith Boyd, sales and marketing director at Eaton Towers. He says owning towers is costly in terms of maintenance and running costs, and gives rise to environmental issues.

“If multiple operators share a tower they will only use two or three litres of diesel per hour between them instead of per operator.” He says 90% of mobile towers in Africa are reliant on generators for power.

In India, cellular calls cost three to four cents a minute, due to the economies of scale that have been achieved, and tower sharing has been a significant contributing factor. Locally, American Towers recently purchased Cell C’s 1,300 towers and committed to funding more in the future.

Cell C subsequently dropped its data prices and Vodacom reacted by doing the same.
As prices come down, users will consume more data capacity, creating more demand and the need for more towers. The next generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G mobile technology will also require more towers.

So the operators have to find ways to reduce costs, and tower sharing reduces capital expenditure. In other parts of Africa, Nigerian operators have been sharing towers for the longest through Helios, a local tower company that builds them and lets out space on them.

Tower sharing is also going on in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, DRC, and Ghana. In Ghana, Eaton Towers provides power and security for towers it manages for Vodafone, which are shared by MTN, Airtel, Vodafone, Tigo (Millicom) and others in Ghana.

“This reflects the willingness of operators to share.” He says operators also sometimes swap tower space between them on a more informal basis.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

Companies will need to optimise their internal networks if they want to benefit from the increased bandwidth capacity that will become available as a result of all the broadband infrastructure that is being built. “A lot of company networks are old and need upgrading,” says Mark van Vuuren, MD of TeleSciences.

If this is not done the bottleneck will move to the local area network. “It is no good having a 100 megabit per second connection to an ISP if the LAN is inefficient,” he says.

This will become increasingly important as companies opt to use cloud services, such as having applications hosted by a service provider. It will also be difficult to implement video conferencing if the internal network is inefficient, says van Vuuren.

He says with the growing demand for employees to work from anywhere, companies also need to ensure they can accommodate this without compromising the security of the corporate network. “Traditional wired LANs also need to morph into wireless LANs, so users can move around with their mobile devices and stay connected.”

Van Vuuren says 80% of large companies are still predominantly running wired networks, with perhaps a few wireless access points in the boardroom, canteen, reception, and other common areas. Some of the other 20%, and many smaller companies, are running completely wireless networks.

“Wi-Fi networks now provide the speed and efficiency to do this,” says van Vuuren. He says the problem with fixed networks is that when offices are reorganised and employees move around network access points are left vacant and new ones are installed.

Companies should do an audit of the access points and cabling that is no longer being used and clean them up, says van Vuuren. “Access points that are not in use, but are connected to a network switch still draw power.”

He says the latest network switches will power down when not in use. An audit of the network and user behaviour will enable companies to decide on the mix of wired and wireless network infrastructure they should have.

Policies and procedures will need to be implemented to ensure that any wireless networks that are installed cannot be accessed by unauthorised users. Companies will also need to ensure that users can remain connected to the network as they move between access points, says van Vuuren.

This can be a problem with access points that are old or are based on different standards. “The latest access points cater for handover as users move around,” he says.

Alternatively management systems are available that cater for all standards and address this problem. Technology tools are also available that will load balance the network traffic to ensure the best performance and will reroute traffic if an access point goes down, says van Vuuren.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and she writes regularly for Business Day. She also runs media training and writing skills workshops, and is the author of A Perfect Press Release – or Not?, a guide to writing and distributing effective press releases, an electronic version of which can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.