CAIRO, Egypt, 14th
May, 2014: In May last year,
Samsung declared it is working on a breakthrough
that could see us achieving download speeds of up to 1GB if we’re
close enough to a mast. Across the globe and in the Middle East,
companies and telecom operators are laying the foundation for the
next generation of super-speed connectivity by beginning to conduct
trials of 5th Generation mobile and broadband services. This is an
impressive and exciting prospect, but there is no reason why mobile
operators in Egypt can’t be offering fast and reliable speeds to
their customers today by utilizing the right Wi-Fi technology.
Ammar Enaya, Regional Director at Aruba
Networks Middle East & Turkey says that with growth in
consumption driving over a billion smartphone shipments and 4G uptake
off to a flying start, there’s no hiding from the fact that the
mobile industry is shifting from voice to data. For consumers too,
mobile data and video traffic is exploding and there are many reports
citing that consumers are lapping up bandwidth-hungry applications
like Skype and Netflix on their smartphones.
However,
while those services may be free and great to use for subscribers,
handling the traffic is not free or easy to manage for the 3G/4G
networks - often resulting in poor and broken service, which remains
one of the biggest complaints amongst mobile users. Yet, in such a
competitive marketplace and with regulators keeping a close watch,
the operators have to be fully prepared to satisfy this appetite of
users at the lowest price available.
In
the UK, British Telecom recently launched an app that will give
customers access to their landline plan from their smartphones as
they seek to benefit from customers looking for ways to minimise
their mobile phone bills. This is a smart move by BT, as the telecoms
giant is focused on its customer and providing an integrated
experience as well as cost savings. We might well see the same thing
happening in the Middle East and subsequently in Egypt. However, for
the mobile operator this type of announcement adds more pressure to
deliver – how will they do this when the network infrastructure
often struggles to keep pace of demand?
Unlike
cellular networks, Wi-Fi allows the IT administrator to own the
connection experience. This ultimately means understanding the device
type, profiling the user and mapping that information back into their
existing CRM systems. This equals huge customer insight and revenue
opportunities for the operator, and crucially, allows them to reduce
bandwidth and networking costs dramatically.
In
addition, service providers, retailers and other organizations can
use these Wi-Fi platforms to deliver finely-tuned content such as
targeted advertisements and special programming in locations like
coffee houses, retail outlets and restaurants.
The
technology is already available thanks to the new wireless standard
802.11ac. This is the first in the industry to deliver gigabit Wi-Fi
combined with the device density and application intelligence
required by today’s Wi-Fi networks.
802.11ac
is more evolutionary than revolutionary, building on what were
revolutionary technologies in 802.11n, most notably MIMO. Among the
key innovations in 802.11ac are wider 80-160 MHz channels and
standard beamforming. It also offers better modulation for faster
throughput, as well as multi-user MIMO, which transmits individual
data streams to multiple receivers simultaneously.
Imprecise
roaming, sub-optimal load balancing, and related Wi-Fi performance
challenges have been perpetual thorns in the side of IT and network
operations managers for years. Enabling client devices to always
connect to the most available, highest-performing AP helps ensure
that enterprises can benefit from the enhanced throughput and
capacity that 802.11ac offers.
As
Wi-Fi has become the de-facto network for smartphones and tablets,
and as more and more of these devices pour onto company networks,
mobile operators in Egypt need to make use of this bandwidth in order
to keep offering their customers the service they have come to
expect. So now, operators can offload their ultra-fast 3G or 4G
traffic onto Wi-Fi networks.
Rather
than looking for a data solution that is a number of years away,
cellular networks in Egypt simply need to embrace the right
technology today to ensure that customers experience the best
possible speed and reliable connectivity.
