Technology is always known to be  dynamic. The dynamism of telecommunications technology, for instance, is such that it props up both operators, equipment manufacturers and subscribers, stand them on their feet for what is new and latest and leave those with late understanding of the message to play catch-up, no matter the size of their economies.

That is why irrespective of the long history of technological development, the robust markets of Europe, America and their likes, incidentally play catch-up in most cases, to most of the innovative technologies available in developing markets of Africa, Middle East and Asia.

For countries like Nigeria that broke into technological development with mobile technology, the market remains a reference point to what leverage dynamism of technology can give. Phone subscribers in Europe where fixed wireline telephony made first entry, would still be gaping with mouth wide open at what a young Nigerian mobile phone subscriber can do with a piece of handset in his hands due to the mobility experiences coming with the GSM or wireless phone devices.

The difference however is that while experienced economies upgrade to what is new, encourage collaboration so that new and old technologies can talk to each other to give subscribers a future full of hope and confidence, emerging economies unfortunately compete in technologies and leave the subscribers with confusion and a desperate choice that costs even pains.

In the world ICT market today, there is a raging technology war between WIMAX,  HSPA and even the 3G driven LTE that is yet to gain ground.

WiMAX, meaning Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology that provides for the wireless transmission of data using a variety of transmission modes, from point-to-point links to portable internet access.

The technology provides up to 75 Mb/sec symmetric broadband speed without the need for cables.
But HSPA, otherwise High Speed Packet Access, is a collection of mobile telephony protocols that extend and improve the performance of existing Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems, UMTS protocols.

 While the Long Term Evolution, LTE, is a project within the Third Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP, to improve the UMTS mobile phone standard to cope with future technology evolutions with targets that include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs and improving services.

Technically speaking, all have to do with the universal mobile telecommunications system but the difference and target is speed. Incidentally, each of these innovations are laying claim to sophistication that could not be found in the other and this is where competition of technologies leaves subscribers a miserable bunch.

Interestingly, Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria is where the war is directed at. The market is huge, untapped and prospects are high.  Incidentally, the WiMAX industry has undoubtedly gained significant momentum in the last year, recording key milestones including product certification, the launch of services by major operators such as Sprint Nextel and key Internet players such as Google. Innovative products like WiMAX notebooks, netbooks and other devices are also boosting opportunities up for the industry.

WiMAX is also starting to take off in key emerging markets which is snapping up spectrums with huge demand for broadband, certification of Mobile WiMAX equipment and low cost equipments like ultra-portable notebooks and netbooks. In Nigeria alone, there are up to 15 licenses for WIMAX operators even though some of them are yet to flag off operations. Prominent states in Nigeria like Lagos, the FCT, Abuja and Yobe, have all deployed WIMAX to draw the dividend of democracy closer to their citizens.

Even, in a recent event in Lagos, Nigeria, The Director of Technical Research and Standards of the Nigerian Communications Communication, NCC,  Dr Sylvanus Ehikioya, admitted in  a presentation “the business imperatives of Wimax” that the initiatives of the NCC geared towards driving access into the rural areas will require the technology deployed by WiMax to be successful.

 He gave examples of such initiatives as the State Accelerated Broadband initiative, community centre development projects, and the Universal Service Provision fund program as initiatives that will deploy the WiMax technology for success.

Ehikioya’s admission sounded more like an endorsement to the efficacy of the technology. But today, things are changing  HSPA and the acceleration of LTE threatens the opportunity for WiMAX in some markets. While HSPA has been found to be a huge success in many markets, LTE is also reported to have accelerated and gained the backing of most of the world’s major mobile operators, including Vodafone and China Mobile.

Those behind these technologies are also talking tough. Ericsson’s Head of Communications, Mr Henry Stenson in an interview recently told this reporter that the advantage and the gap between the two technologies are like day and night. This is how he explained it “Ericsson wants to be the world leader in terms of technology and we are surely doing that. We are now delivering 28 megabit per second in radio systems in the market .

That means the normal broadband connection at home for me is 2.0 megabit per second but of course I would love to have a faster one but I am not using only mobile broadband and I pay almost nothing for it and I can use it all over the world. In terms of comparative technology, if you have more than 90 per cent of the people using one technology, it means there is more money available for that technology in terms of research, technology. If Wimax or the other competing technologies have two or three people doing research and HSPA has about eight people working on its research it is normal that it would be more advanced. 

We are today the delivering the speed that Wimax is promising  five years from now. At that time we will be delivering speed that they have not seen yet. It is a question of technology development. It also means delivering telephony and data traffic exactly on the same system. You don’t have to separate systems for everything”.

Yet, predictions at the recent concluded AfricaCom in Cape Town South Africa, was that WIMAX would account for 103 million subscribers by 2013 while HSPA would be raking in more than 1 billion. Generally, the biggest challenge to developing countries is the issue of access to information, which makes all these technologies useful in their individual capabilities and strengths, to the emerging markets but when information is muddled -up it brings confusion that plays up under development and backwardness.

Now for a technology that has gained acceptability in a market like Nigeria, WIMAX would be reshaping strategies to face the challenges ahead. HSPA is showing a surging bull-like appearance, armed with enviable credentials of being the buzz of the moment and LTE, though expected to make bold appearance from the year 2010 is not also losing hope. After all 3G has been launched in Nigeria by the major GSM operators.

The main target of all these war strategies is basically the technology savvy rural African populace and so observers want policies that would encourage collaboration of these technologies to give subscribers, particularly the unconnected lot in the rural African communities, repite and a new hope, and save the market the doom associated with competing technologies.

Source:vanguardngr