Huawei Launches Industry' s First EasyGSM BTS for Rural Areas 2G Base station enables operators to extend wireless coverage to rural communities in an economically viable way The new solution, developed in collaboration with Vodafone, has been tested with Vodacom South Africa Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei"), a leader in providing next generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world, has today launched a 2G base station (BTS) designed for use in rural communities in developing markets The "EasyGSM BTS" is the industry' s first All IP-based compact BTS, and is specifically designed for rural areas. The    Read more...   Source: MobileWorld Print article Email a friend Post a comment View Comments AFDB Approves US. $66 Million Facility for Submarine Fibre Optic Cable The African Development Bank (AFDB) has approved financing of $66 million for the development of a submarine fiber optic cable connection project along the West African coast including Nigeria. Totaling $240 million, the project will involve the laying of 7,000 kilometers of submarine fiber optic cable between Lagos, Ghana and Siexal, a suburb of Lisbon in Portugal. THISDAY gathered that the project will include branching units to Senegal, Ivory Coast, Morocco and the Canary Islands. Nigerian based firm MST, it was learnt, has expressed interest in the project and is in the pr   Read more...   Source: MobileWorld Print article Email a friend Post a comment View Comments FG cleared NCC to award Spectrum License Competent government sources have revealed that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) did not unilaterally award the controversial 2.3GHz license. On the contrary it got approvals from the Federal Government Agency (the National Frequency Management Council (NFMC) which has statutory powers to manage and assign frequencies both to the NBC and NCC for licensing. The source also indicated that the Minister of Communications cannot unilaterally upturn the resolution of the NFMC regarding the award of the spectrum license. Infact the process to award the controversial 2.3 G   Read more...   Source: MobileWorld Print article Email a friend Post a comment View Comments Facebook begins testing virtual payments system Social networking site Facebook has begun testing its much-anticipated virtual currency payments system with third party application GroupCard. Users who want to buy a GroupCard e-card through the company\'s app are now offered the option of clicking on a \"Pay with Facebook\" button. They then pay with their credits, worth 10 cents each. The currency can be bought - with a credit card - from the Facebook gift shop. The testing comes after Facebook updated its payments terms and conditions on Wednesday to pave the way for the platform. Facebook will take a cut of every transa   Read more...   Source: MobileWorld Print article Email a friend Post a comment View Comments Safaricom extends M-PESA service to key micro-financier Customers of SMEP (Small and Micro Enterprise Programme ), a Kenyan micro-financier working with small businesses, can now make their monthly loan repayments and savings contributions through Safaricom’s popular M-PESA service. The service launched today aims at offering the organization’s over 51,000 customers a reliable and convenient means of payment.  It is also in keeping with the brand identity of M-PESA, an internationally acclaimed innovation by Safaricom and its partner Vodafone, which was founded on the need for money transfer services among the unbanked and smal   Read more...   Source: MobileWorld Print article Email a friend Post a comment View Comments Page1 2 3 4

Finding a place for 3G mobile television Mobile television over a 3G network has been a practical proposition for a number of years now, yet the reality is that it has been a big disappointment, both for users and for operators. Subscribers have not taken to the idea, and so it has not become the big ARPU boost that everyone was hoping for. The reason for this is not hard to find: consumers find the quality unacceptably poor. The bandwidth which operators can allocate to 3G video is simply not enough for video. All the surveys underline this: users watch maybe just a couple of minutes a day of 3G video, but if there is a broadcast mobile television service they will watch it for 50 minutes a day. Given that many broadcasters are happy to cut the bitrates on their digital television channels to the point where the purist finds the image unwatchable, it may seem strange that 3G video is failing for its poor quality of service. The message is that you can only push the audience so far, and jerky, blurred and indistinct images are beyond the point of acceptability. Audiences will not pay for television they cannot see. The simple fact is that the 3G network is too expensive a platform to deliver a mobile television service, and MNOs can make more from other data applications. For the content that large numbers of people want to watch, you have to establish a more efficient way of delivering good quality. If the idea is going to take off, then you need a ubiquitous service capable of building a mass audience. MDMS is an irrelevance here: it is capable of supporting two or at the most three channels, which is hardly a compelling proposition. The only solution is a broadcast platform: probably DVB-H, although in some territories there may be reasons for using a different transmission format. So am I writing 3G video off completely? Certainly not. There is a place for it. But that place lies within a tightly integrated hybrid system which offers a broad range of content, priced to maximise revenues. Early adopters have tried 3G video and rejected it. The only way to get mobile television up and running is with the quality that comes from a broadcast system. That means building out a new transmission infrastructure. MNOs are entitled to see a reasonably swift return on that investment, so it has to be paid for by the subscriber. You would not necessarily pitch it as a fee for television: you would bundle a TV-capable handset in some sort of premium package. Experience with devices such as the iPhone clearly demonstrate a willingness to pay for perceived additional benefits. We are not talking huge sums here: around 8 euros a month and 4% audience penetration will be commercially successful. That is what is happening at H3G in Italy, for example. Genuinely free to air offerings, funded by advertising, are not likely to be financially viable in the near to mid-term future. Even ignoring the current financial problems, advertisers are only happy to pay for messages which get to their targets. It is unlikely they would even consider mobile television as a medium until its audience penetration reaches 30%. That is an enormous number, and I question if it will ever be reached. The mobile television services in Japan and Korea are regarded as massively successful, and they are only now approaching a 20% penetration. But I do believe that mobile television, as part of a premium package, can be seen as attractive. I see it building a substantial audience reasonably quickly, and contributing positively to the revenues of mobile operators. Now comes the paradox. When that happens, audiences will expect video on demand and other tailored content. And the best way to deliver that to mobile devices is – as 3G data. The difference here is that the routine services, the well known channel brands, are handled by the broadcast service so the pressure on data bandwidth is much less. Operators, therefore, will allocate a bigger bitrate to on-demand content, not least because it will be a premium service and therefore likely to be charged directly. Higher bitrate equates directly to image quality, closing the gap between 3G and broadcast. The service has to be seamless, though. It must have a common user interface on the terminal, and a common service management platform at the headend. In this respect, it is very much like an IPTV service (or a hybrid broadcast/IP offering) with broadcast channels and on-demand content provided by a single operator. That leads to the next natural progression: fixed/mobile convergence. In this context it means a direct link between the mobile television service and the IPTV service to the home. You could start watching a television programme on the commute from work, then pick up the end of it on the main television in the living room. You could check out a trailer on the mobile device, and from it order a download of the HD movie to watch at home that evening. The opportunities for attracting large numbers of subscribers to high revenue services are great. In conclusion, then, 3G video is not the place to start, but it is a very important part of the finish of mobile services. The ultimate scenario is a strong mix of broadcast (using DVB-H or something similar) and unicast (3G) services. That is the only way to build a mass audience and achieve a consistently high ARPU. And if, through acquisitions or strategic alliances, mobile operators can also offer broadband to the home and therefore IPTV or IP-delivered additional television services, then it becomes possible to deliver a very attractive fixed/mobile convergent video offering, with multiple levels of revenue opportunity. By Yann Courqueux, Thomson

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Huawei Launches Industry' s First EasyGSM BTS for Rural Areas AFDB Approves US. $66 Million Facility for Submarine Fibre Optic Cable FG cleared NCC to award Spectrum License Facebook begins testing virtual payments system Safaricom extends M-PESA service to key micro-financier Show All

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