Getting set for WiMax
THE FIRST WIDELY AVAILABLE WiMax service should hit South Africa’s streets in August if Wireless Business Solutions (WBS) has its way. Last week WBS announced it was going to start trials with a WiMax service in Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban.
CEO Thami Mtshali says the WBS network already consists of 120 base stations and would offer three forms of service. Those would be a guaranteed bandwidth link with either 128Kbps or 256Kbps, or a slightly faster, non-guaranteed service at 256Kbps and 512Kbps, plus a consumer service running at up to 1Mbps with bandwidth restrictions of 5GB and 10GB.
Those dedicated bandwidth products are firmly targeted at Telkom’s existing fixed line service, while its broadband services will compete against ADSL and even WBS’s own iBurst service. iBurst will act as a service provider for its WiMax service, along with Vodacom Service Provider, at least for the trial period. That’s hardly surprising, considering iBurst is a subsidiary of WBS and Vodacom owns 10% of the company.
WBS didn’t release pricing figures at the launch, saying it was waiting for telecoms regulator Icasa to approve its prices.
At the launch Icasa chairman Paris Mashile reiterated the need for an equitable distribution of radio frequency spectrum among the multitude of companies looking to deploy WiMax networks. Those companies include MWeb, Internet Solutions and Altech. Mashile reaffirmed his opinion that new entrants should be given access to the WiMax spectrum. But that’s been criticised by industry because it would, in all likelihood, lead to some larger players with the financial resources to roll out networks being excluded from the process.
However, questions have been raised about WBS’s ability to offer a competitive service on the amount of spectrum it has available. Although Mashile says WBS was one of the first to apply for access to the 2,5GHz spectrum it only has access to 14MHz – half of the 28MHz some industry insiders say is necessary to operate a reliable network and well below the 40Mhz other players indicate is optimal for running this kind of network. For example, Neotel has been allocated two blocks of 28MHz for its future WiMax network.
However, if Mashile’s comments are to be believed that will be indicative of the future division of the spectrum, as he questioned how much spectrum would be necessary to run a service. Throwing out numbers such 15, 20 or 26MHz. The 2,5GHz band – which is where most of the new operators are looking to run their services – only has 126MHz of spectrum available. Dividing that among numerous operators will require careful consideration.
Mashile added he hoped the WiMax service would be used to provide Internet access to consumers and not to backhaul – sending data from remote sites – locations that can’t easily be accessed via fixed technologies – as is most likely the case with many existing spectrum holders.
The success of this service won’t be dictated by the competition but rather how well WBS can deliver once the number of network subscribers start to increase.
Finweek
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