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By Marozoka Amaka Oruame
Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) and Newwaves Ecosystems Limited have signed a partnership agreement to jointly drive Konn3ct for market acceptance particularly within the public sector where GBB, a government owned connectivity infrastructure company, has tremendous presence.
Konn3ct, a new application for video conferences, virtual meetings and webinars among a portfolio of unified communications services, was developed by NewWaves, a Nigerian company, to compete against Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and other major players in the over $75 global virtual conferencing market.
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The new deal allows GBB to deploy Konn3ct solution in the public service space in line with the local content drive of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Konn3ct is Africa’s first push into the global virtual conferencing market spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdowns across countries, and the resort to virtual communication to keep businesses and other sectors going.
Konn3ct reduces users’ exposure to FOREX
But even this green market of more than 150 million users has been largely dominated by the Chinese’ Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams (MS Teams).
Since its launch early this year, Konn3ct is targeting for the high stakes with unique features designed to work round Nigeria’s and most of sub-Saharan Africa’s infrastructures challenges that keep the connection going and ensures the meeting or conference stay live.
With the new deal, GBB hopes to alter the market dynamics in favour of the home-grown solution that offers more services at lesser cost and zero exposure to the vagaries of foreign exchange – FOREX. All foreign solutions including Zoom, Microsoft Teams are paid for in US dollars putting more burden on the naira.
Konn3ct: GBB is committing to promote indigenous solutions
“We are happy to promote indigenous solutions especially to aid business of government. Konn3ct platform will give the best value for money in terms of ease of communications, improved security, ease of use and payment in naira which will help to save government foreign exchange,” said, Baffajo Beita, Technical Assistant to the Managing Director, GBB. On the GBB team was Catherine Opara, Partners Program Lead, Enterprise Business Group, GBB.
“I am sure that Nigerians and the Federal Government will be proud of what we have been able to develop here. We are happy to announce that the Konn3ct platform had been registered by NITDA.
“Apart from the retail online meetings and Web conferencing features, we have integrated a Learning Management system to Konn3ct to make it suited for the educational sector in Nigeria,” said Chief Enabling Officer (CEO) of Newwaves, Femi Williams at the signing ceremony in Abuja.
MDAs going virtual need to go local on Konn3ct
An increasing number of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are going virtual to ensure work continues in the face of the pandemic. The country’s highest decision-making body, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) now uses the virtual window as a routine. GBB and NewWaves are hoping to get these virtual moves go local on Konn3ct.
“We believe we can leverage this opportunity as a win-win for all stakeholders in Nigeria and save the country huge fund that could be used in other critical sectors of the economy,” said Williams to IT Edge News in Lagos.
A quick peep into Konn3ct – Everything and more
Konn3ct has more than 40 differentiating features that put ahead of other competing apps. The app effectively mirrors real-life conference experiences by enabling participants in a large conference to go into breakout sessions. To make this experience all encompassing, Konn3ct allows as many as eight breakout rooms within the same conference after which the participants are timed out for return into the main meeting.
Konn3ct allows organisers of any meeting to record the proceedings for proper documentation and ease of future reference, doing the job of video cameras and rapporteurs at the same time. Another interesting feature is the one that enables the person hosting a session to play You Tube and other videos and still be able continue the presentation even while the video was still playing.
With a default high-definition audio and a video that allows for four quality bands, ranging from low to high definition, Konn3ct also has a virtual lobby where participants can see the meeting floor while waiting to input their access codes.
