Wireless in Africa – Survival of the fittest

There is a lot of activity going on across Africa to build fibre infrastructure to link to the undersea cables on the east and west coasts. The rule of thumb is that wireless infrastructure is initially deployed as the primary data connectivity medium until fibre is laid in an area, which can sometimes take years.

In extreme cases, wireless will continue to be the primary connectivity medium, and in other cases once fibre is laid it becomes the secondary, failover solution. But whichever the case, the wireless infrastructure continues to play a significant role in Africa.

Wireless connections to undersea cables

Undersea cables provide such huge capacity that ISPs across Africa are being forced to upgrade their wireless infrastructure to carry this through to their customers. This means increasing their spectrum requirements, and many cannot afford to do this. As a result a lot of smaller ISPs are being acquired by the larger players that have the spectrum.

Funding is another obstacle ISPs and telcos are facing in African markets, because the local banks do not have the resources to provide them with finance. So the only way to fund projects is to partner with an international investment company or make arrangements with suppliers to defer payment for the equipment they need to purchase.

Deep understanding of the local environment

Building any form of telecommunication infrastructure in Africa requires flexibility and a deep understanding of the local environment. For example, in Angola equipment has to be flown in because bridges have not been rebuilt since they were destroyed during the civil war. It is impossible to get from one end of Angola to another except by air, which can sometimes involve crossing borders in and out of the country several times.

The ability to build relationships with local partners and in some cases local government to get insight into the areas is also crucial. In some countries spectrum regulations do not comply with the guidelines set down by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This means implementing wireless solutions that fit in with the spectrum allocations of specific countries.

It is also no good assuming that available spectrum is unlicensed because it says so in the ITU guidelines and finding out after the solution is implemented that it requires a license in that particular country.

Flexibility the name of the game

It sometimes happens that the spectrum allocated for a specific use is not ideal for the requirement, but there is no other choice. In addition, the policing of spectrum frequencies to reduce interference is not as efficient as it is in South Africa. Where this is the case, unlicensed spectrum is sometimes a better option because the equipment is designed to cope with a certain amount of interference whereas equipment for licensed frequencies is more sensitive.

Almost all connectivity infrastructure deployments in other parts of Africa require tailored power supply solutions. This might involve solar panels, generators, or wind turbines or a combination of these, depending on the solution, the location, the available space on the base station or high site being used, and weather conditions. Solar panels, for example, are not ideal in some tropical regions where there is a lot of rainfall. 

Physical access is generally a challenge across the rest of the continent, especially when transporting the equipment needed to implement any telecommunication solution. In Sierra Leone, for example, equipment has to be flown in to Lungi Airport and then taken across a small stretch of water to get to the capital, Freetown, which is only a few kilometers away as the crow flies.

Customs clearance is another issue, because tariffs vary from country to country, and different officials interpret the tariff codes on equipment documentation differently. This could have a significant impact on the duties that are payable and in some cases has been known to increase the cost of projects by as much as 50%.

 

Moral of the story? When doing business in Africa you need to know your environment because it truly is survival of the fittest, and if you don’t know what makes you fit, your revenue will be at risk. 

RF connectivity over water - PetroSA

PetroSA is a subsidiary of the Central Energy Fund which is a wholly state-owned entity and is responsible for exploration and production of natural oil and gas.  They needed a ship-to-shore wireless solution to link a refinery to an oil rig 80 kilometres offshore to support voice and data services, and the only way to get to the rig was by helicopter.

The uniqueness of the solution became apparent as the initial site survey unveiled the peculiar conditions in which the telecommunications link needed to be established. The link comprised of a point-to-point solution providing 20 Mbps of aggregate capacity.  Advanced RF equipment had to be procured that could operate in the niche 1.4GHz frequency range  to address the issue of reflection off the water, which would otherwise have distorted the signal and caused the connection to fail (this is known as the ducting phenomenon).

The challenges with a project like this include:

• The vast amount of water and the curvature of the earth made alignment     difficult and special equipment had to be used to overcome the ducting effect;
• Movement of the buoy on rough seas proved challenging when it came to installing, aligning and maintaining the equipment;

• Special permission had to be obtained and a unique design by structural engineers was required to mount the 3 metre antennas on to the platform;

• The execution area was considered highly hazardous because of the fact that production deals mainly with oil and gas which is highly flammable, which meant that the equipment had to be deemed safe for long term use as well.

The benefit of the new system, however, was that the process control systems used by PetroSA was based on old analogue technology which could not be replaced at the time.  These systems were supported through various telecommunications systems which have since then, become obsolete.  The integrated and modernised telecommunications put in place by Comsol however, could accommodate these legacy process control  systems. 

The Case for LMDS against WiMax

WiMax was hyped by industry experts to be the solution to all kinds of ills besetting the telecommunication access industry. This has not yet happened in South Africa.  The reasons for this are manifold. In my opinion, ICASA has dragged its feet and made wrong decisions regarding spectrum allocations for this service. Entities like Sentech, Telkom, et cetera have had a first bite at the apple, so to speak. Unfortunately, the public saw very little of this technology due to the incumbent still trying to leverage of its monopoly of owning the local access loop. Sentech's first priority was the distribution of broadcasting services.


The net result was that valuable RF spectrum was lying fallow and not being used to provide connectivity in under-serviced areas. Private industry tried unsuccessfully to petition ICASA to release some of this spectrum which would enable the provision of such services. Currently, we are still waiting on ICASA to release WiMax spectrum through some sort of auction process that may or may not make the WiMax service expensive. Many organisations might receive RF spectrum with limited channel bandwidth, limiting the expected throughput that might be delivered to a client. This limited bandwidth (speed) will probably place WiMax on a par with the bandwidth achieved by ADSL technologies. The window of opportunity for WiMax to provide services, is closing because of these delays and issues.

With this in mind, it can be seen that any mid-size to larger organizations cannot effectively rely on WiMax as a technology, to provide acceptable solutions to their connectivity requirements. An older technology, LMDS, seems to be a valuable alternative. This technology does not pretend to offer mobility like WiMax, instead it has a value proposition regarding fixed sites requiring high bandwidth, symmetric services. This is the type of service that businesses require. ICASA also does not view the higher frequency spectrum of LMDS services to be as valuable as WiMax spectrum, making it more easily accessible by network operators.

Considering the previous points, I believe that we might see a quiet revolution away from WiMax to LMDS in South Africa as it has an immediate business benefit to network operators to effectively provide access services to their clients. This will continue until users demand even higher bandwidths to provide a true alternative to the invasion of fibre optical media into their businesses. Maybe by then, there will be light at the end of the tunnel.    




Matie Strydom

Chief Technical Officer

Comsol Office Move

Please note that as of Monday 31 October 2011, Comsol Head Office will be located at:

152 Roan Crescent

Corporate Park North

Midrand

Gauteng

Kindly contact us on +27 (0)87 361 1305 or click here for a map.

Local loop unbundling: Just what is all the fuss about and why should a wireless company care?

Many moons ago, governments realised that they had to provide telecommunication infrastructure to the populace in order for them to telecommunicate. In most countries this was done with tax-payer’s money, under the guise of state owned monopolies.

How did this work?

Well, if Joe Soap wanted a telephone line, he would call the incumbent telephone company (in our case Telkom) and place an order for a service. Telkom would then run a copper wire from his house to their nearest exchange, sell him a telephone handset and " Presto!" the customer could make calls to his grandmother.

Now, in order for these calls to be possible, the exchange that Joe Soap was connected to had to be connected to the exchange that his grandmother was connected to. This interconnection of exchanges was accomplished through a vast network that was also sponsored by Tax payers as and when growth demanded.This system worked very well, except for one small problem: Private enterprise could never ever compete fairly with these huge monopolies, resulting in an environment where consumers had no freedom of choice.

What exasperated this problem even more in most countries, was the fact that these monopolies had protection under law from any competition. They were the only people allowed to lay copper and fibre, build wireless networks and provide circuits between exchanges.

This protection was largely diminished in South Africa when the local regulatory environment was relaxed under the new ECA (Electronic Communications Act), but public sector companies are still decades behind in building infrastructure that equals the scale of the previous state-owned Telkom.
Building the core of a network; that part where the switching and routing of calls and data happens; is faster to do than getting wires to Joe Soap and his grandmother's homes, for the obvious reasons of sheer numbers of subscribers and vast distances required to be covered.

These wires between the exchanges and the end-users' homes, are what is known as the local loop.
There are two distinguishable parts to the local loop:

1. The actual pairs of copper cable.
2. The voice and data that is carried across these wires.

Governments have realised that there is an unfair challenge for newly empowered, private sector companies when competing to get to these customers, and have thus decided to allow these companies access to the existing wires in the ground that the tax payers paid for in the first place.
This process of giving access to the wires in the ground to private companies, is what is known as unbundling of the local loop.

There are, however, disparaging views on unbundling.
On the one hand, people argue that by unbundling the local loop, governments would be discouraging investment in newer technologies and advanced infrastructure by the new kids on the block. Why would “123-We-Connect-U” spend money on better infrastructure, if it could use the existing infrastructure at a fraction of the current costs?

Surely these companies would much rather spend this money on advertising and building superior core networks that would place Telkom at a disadvantage.

How would the maintenance of these local loops be handled? 
Who would carry the costs?
And to what extent should new companies be allowed access to the local loop?
Should they get access to the services on top of the cable, or even to the cable itself?

On the flip side of the coin is the argument for unbundling, which says we, the consumers, paid for these networks and then government just gave it away when it was privatised. That’s not fair is it?
This process in South Africa dates back to as far as 2006, when the then minister of communications announced the appointment of the Local Loop Unbundling Committee.

On 22 June of this year ICASA published their view in light of the ministerial instructions, in a Discussion Paper for comment on this matter by stakeholders. (Gov. Gazette # 34382 / Notice 409 of 2011) If this matter is of interest to you I recommend that you read this paper in detail.
In a nutshell, ICASA holds the view that the local loop has, in fact, already been unbundled.
Really?

Their view is as follows:
Section 43 of the ECA already compels license holders to lease facilities to other licensees.
Facilities that have to be leased include, but are not limited to:
• Wire
• Cable
• Mast
• Radio apparatus
• Space on and in poles, ducts, cable trays etc.

On May 31 2010, the Electronic Facilities Leasing Regulations were published, regulating these leasing conditions and obligations. The regulator thus believes that all that is left to conclude is a standard that needs to be adhered to when requesting access.

The June 22 Discussion Paper asked the relevant stakeholders for their input. This input had to be submitted by 26 August. In other words, like so many things in this beautiful country of ours, the legislative framework exists for ECS and ECNS license holders to get whole-sale and non-discriminatory access to the local loop, as well as other facilities, (like masts, poles and radio apparatus) yet I feel that it will take a court action like the Altech vs The Minister of Communications case, before we will see broad applicaton of this process.

Let's see what the stake-holders present and what action follows from this latest attempt to get cheaper communications to all South Africans.

Are they all afraid that they might end up giving more than what they can take?
Will ISPA take a lead in fighting the consumer’s right to cheaper calls and data?

I for one will be watching with bated breath.

Rico du Plessis
Chief Operations Officer

Saving costs on Microsoft Office

The cost of IT (hardware or software) is ever increasing in our day and age….or so it feels at least. The past 20 years have moved at the speed of light but the one biggest IT inventions of the past 20 years has been the internet. Can any of us predict the next evolution or progression of this technology? I know I can’t.

One should however, question how the internet can add value in one’s life? Now I think we can all quickly answer:

1. I no longer need to spend hours in a library to research encyclopaedias, I can just “Google it”.
2. I can store all my media on my Facebook profile (photo albums do not need to sit on a shelf gathering dust).
3. I have a voice through Mixit, Twitter, Gmail etc.

With all this said, the new kid on the block is called “cloud computing”. What is cloud computing? It is not a piece of soft cotton I can tell you that.

Cloud computing refers to services available on the internet, usually at no charge…such as Facebook, Google etc.  Until recently, cloud computing has been directed at the individual more so than companies. This however is changing and it is changing at a rapid pace. We now need to educate ourselves about cloud computing and what exactly is available.

The purpose of this piece is to inform you that one of the most basic and most used software platforms is now available in “the cloud”.  That’s right; you can get Microsoft Office online. You no longer need to buy Microsoft Office. All you require is an internet connection and voilà, Bob’s your uncle. Microsoft Office is free on the cloud!

Brilliant isn’t it? Well that depends whether you have quality bandwidth and access to it at all times. As indicated above, the only thing you need (besides a computer) is an internet connection when you want to use it. So that is the catch 22.

I hope that the CFOs’ and Financial Directors’ ears are peaking up, as this is significant. Imagine all the software costs that companies can save if this is structured correctly. Yearly licence fees will be something of the past. Want to test it for yourself? Go to Skydrive info. Create your own Windows Live ID today and start testing it (http://skydrive.live.com/). This is just s taste of what is available on the cloud.

Just remember, you need a quality, uninterrupted internet connection to make this work. We have a responsibility today to invest in robust telecommunication infrastructure for our children and their children.

Enjoy the cloud!!!

Alec Candiotes

Chief Financial Officer

Selling technology as opposed to the technology of selling

Selling technology is a very specific portion of the overall genre of selling.  Sales in itself is often, and in some cases with good reason, known as the “Dark Arts”.  Everyone has had some kind of encounter with this, from the persistence of telesales people down to the smooth operator punting a multi-million Rand marketing campaign, we all at some time get exposed to someone trying to sell us something.

The key in all of this is being able to identify what is being sold to us as opposed to the person doing the selling and it is this fundamental concept that forms the basis of our sales philosophy at Comsol.  We are in the fortunate position of being able to offer a quality product to our market as opposed to the poor road warrior who tries his utmost to sell an inferior product in order to make his quota.

While this in no way means we can be complacent as a sales division, it does allow us the crucial advantage of being able to engage with customers knowing that what we are offering is truly something that the market wants.  It allows Comsol’s sales professionals to show full transparency to customers, secure in the knowledge that our offering is one of quality.

I am a firm believer that sales people can only be truly effective if they believe in the product they are selling and pass this passion on to customers.  The metronomic sales person who relies on a tired and worn sales pitch will never be truly effective in the dynamic world of selling technology.....perhaps pencils....but not world class, multi-million Rand networks..

Bearing all of this in mind, I can confidently say that while we may not have divisions of hundreds of salespeople at Comsol and while we may not cut it in the world of selling gym contracts, we certainly do have a focussed, knowledgeable and passionate team of sales professionals who believe in what Comsol as a business offers to the world of Telecommunications.  And it is this personality trait as opposed to the generic, silky sales skills of the “pre-owned” car salesman that drives Comsol to even greater success.

Darren Morgan

Chief Commercial Officer