Mobile communications : It's all chance - By Keith Boyd

Over the last ten years, GSM cellular communications technology has changed the lives of 100-million Africans. But with 600-million more potential mobile phone users in the wings, vendors are looking to new technologies to bring them on line.

With the evolution and growth of the GSM industry have come many benefits for far-flung communities and many opportunities for emerging businesses. It has also seen the building of enormous wealth for GSM cellular service providers.

But let’s not begrudge them their gains because they have made significant contributions to business enablement and the empowerment of the disenfranchised.

That said, we are about to witness the end of the GSM era as we know it.

New technology has overtaken the GSM networks. Very soon, the ties between the distance and the duration of cellular telephone calls – central to GSM billing - will be loosened. And the stranglehold that these companies - and their partners - have had on the market and the maintenance of high prices will end.

Internet telephony options – such as Skype – which offers free links to fellow Skype users and low cost options for calls to fixed line and mobile phones all over the world using voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, will see to it.

Free handset-to-handset (point-to-point) calls are already possible that by-pass the cellular networks altogether, if made within a one kilometre radius using appropriate hardware.

Other low cost options will soon come from the adoption of WiFi and WiMax roaming technologies that facilitate links into existing phone systems to provide lower-cost internal and external voice communication.

The sceptics say many of these innovations will not be comparable to GSM from a features perspective. They are probably right. One of the big benefits of GSM is its seamless “hand-over” capabilities, from one “cell” to another.

This is all well and good when you’re travelling at 120 km/hr on the freeway. But for the average person in a rural village deep in the heart of Africa, cell-to-cell hand-over is not a major issue.

Neither is remaining relatively stationery while on a telephone call to maintain the connection - particularly if the call is free or priced at a fraction (less than 10%) of the GSM service offering.

Keith Boyd is the CEO of Venture Communications Group, a Communications infrastructure company with offices and subsidiaries throughout Africa. He can be contacted on keithb@venturecomms.com