Globalization of Wireless and Mobile Networks; the Impact to Africa

Abstract

Globalization of wireless and mobile networks is making the network services ubiquitous; availability of any network service anywhere, at anytime and to anyone. The network should be able to transport interactive multimedia services and data streaming to facilitate both broadband and narrowband services such as video telephony and mobile TV, e-commerce, e-government, e-entertainment, e-education, e-health and other new services. The network must make these services accessible in both the developed and the developing world, in the densely populated urban centres and in the remotely located sparsely populated rural environments. The kind of network that is required should be a flexible with the ability to handle high traffic density and low traffic density depending on the requirements of the subscribers at a particular time. It should be adaptive and be able to maintain the same quality of service despite different radio environments. It should be robust and reliable. By globalization we also mean that the network should support both horizontal and vertical roaming and the information transported across such a huge network must be secured.