Nigerian Wimax Market is Very promising - Smith

Winston Smith, managing director, Alvarion Southern Africa has described the Nigerian Wimax Market as very promising.
He said Nigeria via the Nigerian Communications Commission has shown itself to be receptive to WiMAX technology by allowing for competition through the allocation of scarce WiMAX spectrum.
This, he said, will give much more choice to users, consumers and businesses, who were previously limited to the services of the incumbent leased line operators.
The Alvarion boss described WiMAX as a “wireless broadband access medium, that is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL,” adding that, “WiMAX is the only means by which operators are able to deliver broadband services in their respective markets, without the high cost and long delays in establishing wired broadband networks on a large scale”.
He said Wimax 2, the new mobile standard offers the biggest benefit to operators and end-users as many more vendors have developed product on this platform, allowing for proliferate Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), the greater volume of which means more choice can be offered and at a significantly reduced price, above the GSM standard.
Smith said, the ease and flexibility of deploying a wireless solution, over a wired or fixed leased line solution provides for the opportunity for cloud computing and virtualisation not previously enjoyed and that most importantly, the speed of deployment of a wireless solution removes the barrier that a leased line or the absence presents.
“In particular, it allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and high-end residential users who have a requirement for business applications to benefit from the reduced cost of shared computing. Remember that a WiMAX solution can provide data throughputs from as low as a few kilobits per second to many megabits per second. Previously, the owner of a smaller business could not afford the high software licence fees in addition to infrastructure costs necessary to enable high-level business applications.
Now, SMEs are able to enjoy these applications thanks to the cost benefit provided for by WiMAX. WiMAX allows for multiple vendors and manufacturers to be able to offer a wireless solution that runs on a standards-based platform, which allows for bigger ecosystems, in the end allowing for reduced cost to the end-user,” he said.
He opined that despite the lack of sufficient infrastructure necessary to support successful WiMAX roll-out in Nigeria, the situation is this improving by the day.