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Sci-fi may become real life in South Africa
Andrew October
June 24 2004 at 10:40AM

Sci-fi fantasy aside, this one's for real. A video call from one cellphone to another was made in South Africa, using only a local network's infrastructure, with just a few borrowed extra bits.

MTN and Vodacom are in a media-generated race to become Africa's first fully operational Third Generation, or 3G, cellphone network. This will allow cellphone users to see the person they are talking to.

MTN chief technical officer Karel Pienaar said on Wednesday that MTN was rolling out 3G in South Africa.

"Ten years ago people said cellphones were toys for yuppies and no one could afford them," said Pienaar. "Now we are rolling out 3G in South Africa."

'I think people will be pleasantly surprised'
Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig announced a few weeks ago that his network had plans to deploy 3G here.

As with GSM, there was criticism that Africa could ill afford the expensive technology, yet a decade on 18 million South Africans now use the technology that in 2001 in number alone surpassed that for fixed-line telephone connections. In Nigeria it took less than a year to achieve the same.

Commenting on the Internet working problems networks experienced when they first introduced multimedia messaging, MTN's Santie Botha said: "It's a difficult position for us because we need usage to drive the agreements and usage demands networking agreements.

"We're working on it and with 3G I think we're going to be better prepared. I can't disclose much but I think people will be pleasantly surprised."

3G will offer an array of services from downloadable video clips and music to live broadcasting of soccer matches, just in time for the 2010 World Cup.

'People said cellphones were toys for yuppies'
But the biggest benefit lies not in the delivery of expensive multimedia content but rather in the wide availability of wireless broadband, resulting in widespread access to high-speed Internet.

3G will deliver as much as 3.7 megabytes a second and will be commercially operational by mid-2005.



This article was originally published on page 15 of Cape Argus on June 24, 2004

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=115&art_id=vn20040624104011501C681497