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An Overview of WiMAX in North Africa
During his speech on March 20, 2006, the 50th anniversary of Tunisia’s independence, President Ben Ali recommended the adoption of WiMAX technology for broadband Internet access. WiMAX was considered part of the public telecommunication network; so, the government authorized Tunisie Telecom, the historical operator, and Divona Telecom to roll out WiMAX networks. Tunisie Telecom has undertaken a couple of trials in Tunis city and launched a tender to select a WiMAX vendor to roll out a network in a small suburban area located in Sfax city. The area to cover is about 6 km in length. However, Divona has implemented WiMAX networks in Tunis city and Sfax, mainly in urban areas to cover corporate customers.
From a regulatory perspective, there is still no uniform licensed spectrum for WiMAX, and because it is still new, it’s relatively unregulated and could be impacted by future legislative action. There is a pending study on legislation and the amendment of a new telecommunications code at governmental level; the “Instance Nationale des Telecommunications,” the local authority for telecom regulation, launched last April a pre-selection tender to shortlist specialised companies to support their efforts in local loop unbundling, value-added services, and market study and benchmarking on high speed broadband access modes in Tunisia.
In Algeria, the ARPT has the responsibility to manage the 3.5 GHz spectrum, specially dedicated for wireless public telecommunications networks. The 3.5 GHz spectrum is licenced because of its scarcity. To be able to acquire a portion of the spectrum, it is necessary to obtain an exploitation licence for local loop or an authorization for VoIP services. The ARPT has granted WiMAX authorizations to the fixed telephony operators (Algerie Telecom and CAT) and the VoIP operators (SLC, LAST NET, EEPAD, ICOSNET, WATANIYA, ANOUAR NET, and VOCALONE).
Besides a couple of trials in progress, only SLC has really deployed WiMAX networks in several Wilayas (equivalent to provinces). Since 2005, SLC started a WiMAX-service business with coverage for enterprises. Also, we’ve heard a lot of talk about a partnership sealed in April 2007 between Algérie Telecom and Galaxia for the deployment of WiMAX networks.
Meditel, a GSM operator, and Maroc Connect are the two providers who acquired WiMAX licenses in Morocco in 2005 through a public tender. They both started trials and rollout of their respective networks in 2006.
In conclusion, compared with other solutions such as ADSL, WiMAX networks enable operators and service providers to cost-effectively provide broadband access to millions of new potential customers. This is even more crucial for developing countries, for which WiMAX’s key advantages such as flexibility, ease to deploy, and cost effectiveness are crucial.
It clearly appears that WiMAX is the appropriate technology to quickly increase broadband access subscribers in developing countries and thus highly contribute to bridging the “Digital Divide.”
However, in spite of the rhetoric and lobbying regarding this subject, North African incumbent telecom operators are rather focusing their strategy on ADSL, whereas the new entrants are still reluctant to invest substantially. The rare WiMAX trials, as mentioned above, are still niches. Many argue that because this technology is still in its infancy and subject to change and evolution, “wait and see” is the best strategy.
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