Minister says 'no' but the ICASA hearings continue

It's not always easy to get a clear picture of the South African telecommunications regulatory landscape. We made a brief mention of some developments in our Happy New Year post and now follow up on recent developments.

Earlier this week, the communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri confirmed that VANS licenses will not be converted to ECNS licenses, as reported on in this ITWeb article. This in itself is nothing new but its not clear whether the 'no' means 'never'. Taking a look at the ICASA website and the latest media release, one sees that on the 17th and 18th of March ICASA will hold hearings on the matter of converting VANS licenses to ECNS licenses. From this one can gather that the 'no' is in fact 'maybe'.

Thats all very interesting, but why should consumers care? Well for one these developments affect how much choice you will have as a consumer. In fact in some areas it could come down to having no choice at all. You may be in some small town where no licensed network operator (ECNS license holder) is willing to provide you, or your local hotspot for that matter, with any kind of Internet connectivity purely because they haven't gotten on to it, perhaps never will, and you'll just have to wait. One should also consider that there are small network operators who are having to dedicate resources to fighting for their right to exists, at some level this must affect the quality of their service. The latter again affects you as the consumer, you are left with less choice.

It's got something to do with rockets

We get asked about our company name from time to time and so in this post talk about its origins. Asking how we came to choose RedButton as our company name is a fair question. After all, we are a WiFi hotspot company and there are an infinite number of other concoctions we could have come up with that more clearly indicate that we are in the wireless Internet business.

The origin's of the name RedButton stems back from Nico's post-grad days (Nico is one of RedButton's co-founders). Red Button Solutions was the generic name given to a software house that was to develop mobile applications for smart phones. The idea of starting this firm was put on ice and revived at least once but never truly got off the ground. The initial attraction to a red button was that a red button would generally indicate that something of note would occur once pressed. As an example buttons that launch rockets tend to be red and anybody that has seen a Soyuz rocket launch would attest to the momentousness of the occasion.



When RedButton was in its infancy, its founders debated what the name should be, in the end it was between WiTech and RedButton. We thought the former would just be another random company name and in particular be difficult to remember. We chose RedButton and have never looked back.

Hassle Free Networking on Ubuntu with NetworkManager

In this post, the first in a series covering various platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac), we look at networking on Ubuntu Linux using NetworkManager. We primarily use Ubuntu Linux at RedButton and so its only natural that NetworkManager comes under the spotlight first.

NetworkManager is the network configuration tool that you will generally use to connect to wireless and wired networks. The tool is there to make networking easy or pain-free and the official design goals are simplicity, visual clarity and automation. We believe it performs admirably in all departments, especially when considering the needs of the average desktop user who simply wants to get connected to their local office network or hotspot.

In order to use NetworkManager, or to see whether you are already using it, have a look at your network settings. Click on System > Administration > Network and the Network Settings screen will open. On most laptops you will see a Wireless connection and Wired connection under the Connections tab and perhaps even a Modem connection as is displayed below.



If NetworkManager is being used to manage the connection, you will see Roaming mode enabled displayed as you do with the Wired connection in the image above. As you can see, the Wireless connection displays something different and is thus not managed by NetworkManager, so we select the Wireless connection and click on Settings to see the following screen pop up.


Click on Enable roaming mode and the wireless and connection settings are no longer configurable, as is shown in the image below, as you will now be using NetworkManager to manage your network settings.


After you have done the above, you will click on the network icon that would usually be in the top right hand portion of your screen as is shown below.


Assuming that you want to connect to your local WiFi network, right click and select Enable Wireless:


Next click on the icon to view the list of available networks and select the network you want to connect to:

In the example shown above a connection has been made to RedButton Internet and it is an unencrypted network, as hotspots generally are since you authenticate using a web interface. You would be prompted for a passphrase or network key when connecting to an encrypted network.

There is more to NetworkManager, but mostly its operation is automated and intuitive. We leave you to discover the rest of it and enjoy networking on Ubuntu.