According to London’s Balancing Act, Africa’s mobile operators are faced with a number of network challenges that will have major commercial consequences.
It identified the need to transition to IP for both voice and data to reduce costs as a major challenge, another is being able create a data network out of their legacy narrow pipe networks that is fit for purpose.
It said a small start-up that is using OpenBTS to reach remote locations may have a contribution to make.
Paul Homburger, Range Network’s Director of Sales said OpenBTS has long been regarded as an outsider technology and something the mobile operators and equipment vendors do not give much credence to. Its advocates point to the fact that you can use it to build a network that can leverage standard Internet technology to build a core network.
“Balancing Act said: “You can build out standard, low cost Wi-Networks alongside with low power equipment. It uses inexpensive software-defined radios for GSM calling that operate in the 700Mhz-2.4Ghz spectrum range.
“The network’s intelligence can either be at the edge of the network or in the cloud or in a standalone system. Access to the GSM stack is software-defined and access to the base station is through a standard computer running Linux.
“The architecture collapses GSM and 3G into a single platform, thus simplifying the core network and enabling web services directly to mobile handsets. This will allow developers to innovate on and in the network.”
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