Wireless for universal telecoms access by William Hearmon FSAIEE, chairman, African CDMA Forum Basic mobile telephony has done a wonderful job of empowering Africa. A subsistence farmer growing a larger crop can now negotiate a price for his tomatoes before picking them and going to market. Information is power and the middle-man can be kept in his place without holding the poor farmer to ransom because of his ability to make a phone call on his prepaid mobile phone. Of the 800-million inhabitants in Africa • Delivering mobile data with each other. Thus, mobile service subscribers approximately 600-million are subsistence • Offering greater network capacity were still often limited to using their phones in a farmers. They want to improve their lot. • Operating with existing second-generation single country or region. In an effort to standardise Ubiquitous coverage with 3G networks will do technologies future digital wireless communications and make a lot to give the New Partnership for Africa’s global roaming with a single handset possible, • Enabling rich data applications such as Development a kick start. Then the farmer VoIP, video telephony, mobile multimedia, the ITU established a single standard for wireless will be able to “surf” the web on his mobile interactive gaming and more. networks in 1999. Called IMT-2000, which is phone at a lower cost to see how better to commonly referred to today as 3G, the initiative grow his tomatoes; improve crop yields and A brief history of 3G set forth the requirements (mentioned above) for produce better cattle. Next generation wireless First generation wireless, or 1G, refers to the third generation of wireless networks. technologies offer a tremendous opportunity for analogue networks introduced in the mid-1980s. Where is 3G today in Africa? providing access to global telecommunications Examples include advanced mobile phone service at a profi t to the operators. The African CDMA (AMPS) used in North America and total access Today, wideband CDMA (WCDMA) and Forum (ACF) is an African trade association communications system (TACS) used in the UK. CDMA2000 are by far the dominant standards serving Africa’s CDMA fixed and mobile In South Africa we had the C450 mobile system in terms of current commercial services, operator member community by promoting, protecting run by Telkom which was relatively expensive deployment plans and vendor support. In the and enhancing their interests and investments. and took ten years to achieve ten thousand ACF website one may see via the selection of For further details on the ACF and how to join maps available where the deployments in various see www.3gafrica.org. This website gives links frequency bands are taking place. Nigeria has 39 to the technologies discussed in this paper. According to the ITU and licensed operating companies in the CDMA2000 IMT-2000, a wireless standard 1X-EV-DO 800 MHz band alone. Tanzania has The 3G standard must meet minimum bit-rate just licensed four. MTN and UTL in Uganda have 3G stands for third-generation wireless technology requirements to be been operating CDMA2000 WiLL systems for a and networks. It is based on the International while now. Mauritius and South Africa have had Telecommunication Union (ITU) initiative for a considered 3G WCDMA networks for more than a year. Movicel single global wireless standard called International in Angola is the largest mobile operator in Africa Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000). subscribers. Most 1G technologies and systems with CDMA2000. Every one of the 48 countries This concept of a single standard evolved into were country or region-specifi c and thus offered in sub-Saharan Africa are licensing and deploying a family of fi ve 3G wireless standards. Of those limited coverage.As mobile communications CDMA systems in the next year. fi ve, the most widely accepted are CDMA2000, grew in popularity, networks often became Launched commercially by wireless operators WCDMA (UMTS) and TD-SCDMA. According overloaded, resulting in busy signals and dropped in 2000, CDMA2000 1X was the world’s to the ITU and IMT-2000, a wireless standard calls. The solution was second-generation first operational 3G technology, capable of must meet minimum bit-rate requirements to be wireless, or 2G, which emerged in the early considered 3G: 1990s. 2G technologies were digital and offered transmitting data faster than most dial-up services. the much-needed capacity that 1G analogue Today, more than 210-million people enjoy • 2 Mbps in fixed or in-building the benefi ts of CDMA2000 1X, which provides environments systems did not afford. Several technologies were enhanced data capacity compared with all 2G • 384 kbps in pedestrian or urban widely used: environments technologies. • GSM was and still is popular in Europe and • 144 kbps in wide area mobile Asia Pacifi c, and Latin America Also known as universal mobile environments telecommunications system (UMTS), WCDMA • Variable data rates in large geographic area • TDMA was used in the Americas and is still used in Latin America is the 3G standard chosen by most GSM/GPRS systems (satellite) wireless network operators wanting to evolve In addition to providing faster bit rates and greater • CDMA IS-95 or cdmaOne was used primarily their systems to 3G network technology. in the Americas and Asia Pacifi c capacity over previous-generation technologies, WCDMA offers enhanced voice and data capacity 3G standards excel by effectively: However, these 2G technologies are incompatible and peak data rates faster than most dial-up Elektron May 2006 33 services and average rates consistently greater and enhanced communications. Workforces, choose to deliver more channels of content or than global system for mobile communications/ farmers, transporters and entrepreneurs can fewer channels of content in higher resolution. general packet radio service (GSM/GPRS) and essentially work from anywhere at anytime. enhanced data for GSM evolution (EDGE). As of Phones coming out of China even have built-in EV-DO Rev. B February 2006, more than 51-million subscribers barcode scanners. 3G technology also benefi ts EV-DO Rev. B, a further development on the were using WCDMA for their mobile voice and the other participants in the wireless value CDMA2000 roadmap beyond Rev. A, offers data needs. chain. Wireless network operators are able to multi-channel capabilities, which allow network capitalise on increased voice capacity, greater operators to aggregate multiple 1,25 MHz What does 3G offer Africans and who benefi ts network effi ciency, lower costs per user served, channels simultaneously and increase data rates from it? increased average revenue per user and greater dramatically. The fi rst implementation of Rev. B 3G wireless services enable consumers and service differentiation. Device manufacturers will support up to 9,3 Mbps on the forward link professionals to experience excellent voice can leverage the enhanced capabilities of 3G and 5,4 Mbps on the reverse link (the standard, quality as well as a wide array of compelling data networks to sell premium wireless devices in at its theoretical limit and aggregating 20 MHz of services, including: volume. Finally, 3G technology’s data capabilities spectrum, allows up to 75 Mbps on the forward open up an enormous world of opportunity for • Mobile internet connectivity link and 27 Mbps on the reverse link) One of application developers and content providers. the chief advantages of Rev. B is that it puts the • Mobile e-mail control for scaling bandwidth into the network What’s next? • Multimedia services, such as digital photos operators’ hands, allowing operators to tailor and movies taken by and shared via wireless The future of 3G is impressive - in fact, it’s their systems to the spectrum they have available. handsets already here. Rev. B’s fl exibility will enable signifi cant capacity • Wireless application downloading and performance improvements, while protecting • Video-on-demand and short-format Clipcast CDMA2000 1xEV-DO CDMA2000 operators’ current investments in content Launched in 2002, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO is networks and devices. Furthermore, it will allow • Real-time multiplayer gaming a data-optimised evolution of the CDMA2000 more of operators’ spectrum to be used for IP- • Enhanced emergency and location-based standard, capable of delivering peak forward based services, including mobile broadband services link data rates of 2,4 Mbps, or rates comparable data, wireline-quality VoIP and multicast traffi c • Low-latency push-to-talk and push-to-video to wired broadband. By dividing radio spectrum in a manner that results in lower operator costs message services into separate voice and data channels, EV-DO, through greater effi ciencies. which uses a 1,25 MHz data channel, improves For consumers, 3G quite simply means a more HSDPA/HSUPA rewarding wireless experience – high-quality, network effi ciency and eliminates the chance low-cost voice, and fun and useful data services that an increase in voice traffi c would cause data HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) is whenever they want them, whenever they need speeds to drop. an evolution of WCDMA, optimised for packet- them and wherever they have mobile phone switched data applications. HSDPA provides CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A service. The small farmer and rural business impressive enhancements over WCDMA on the entrepreneur in Africa can empower himself by EV-DO Rev. A is a signifi cant evolutionary step in downlink (also referred to as the forward link) - linking into the 3G networks emanating from the CDMA2000 1xEV-DO progression. Expected promising 14,4 Mbps peak data rates - resulting in a better end-user experience. Subscribers with his cities. to launch in 2006, EV-DO Rev. A provides a peak HSDPA service are able to receive emails with forward link data rate of 3,1 Mbps and a peak CDMA 2000 systems in 850 MHz have a cell large attachments, surf the web or download reverse link rate of 1,8 Mbps.