Wireless is good for broadband

By Damaria Senne, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 25 Apr 2006

Wireless technology is the key to driving broadband subscriber growth and business opportunities for operators, said speakers at the African WiMax and CDMA Forum in Midrand yesterday.

The three-day conference, organised by Advancing ICT Knowledge in Africa (Aitec Africa), aimed to provide an educational event for Africa`s telecoms operators, Internet service providers, regulators, resellers and solution providers.

Gray Goldstein, regional sales manager of Alvarion, an Israeli wireless network solutions provider, said WiMax offers business opportunities for incumbents as well as new entrants in the telecoms market.

"For example, if you`re an operator in Nigeria and you have been allocated frequency that can be used to deploy WiMax which did not use to be worth much, you will find that you now own a limited resource that is incredibly valuable," he said.

Ownership of the spectrum and using it to deploy wireless technology can help new entrants, whom he calls innovative challengers of incumbents, to become more competitive.

Goldstein drew an analogy between the growth that was enjoyed by the telephone industry in the past decade, with growth broadband providers could enjoy if they went wireless.

It took 100 years to reach one billion telephone subscribers worldwide, he said. Mobile phones took advantage of being wireless and mobile to grow to more than a billion subscribers in 10 years. There are now 3.5 billion telephony subscribers worldwide, he added.

"By cutting the wires, we have an opportunity to do the same with the broadband industry."

Thami Mtshali, CEO of iBurst, said users hunger for information through broadband access.

The broadband market is not only coming from those migrating from the dial-up market, as one would expect, he noted.

Mtshali said in SA, where the broadband subscriber base is still under a million, there are big opportunities to provide broadband regardless of what technology is being used.

This is being driven by music downloads, video downloads and gaming, he explained. Voice over Internet Protocol and the need to make cheap phone calls are also important drivers of wireless broadband Internet adoption.