 | Issue: | AME 2013 |
| Article no.: | 9 | |
| Topic: | Better design – not expensive technology | |
| Author: | Hani Alami | |
| Title: | Founder & CEO | |
| Organisation: | Coolnet | |
| PDF size: | 213KB |
About author
As a veteran with over 20 years national and regional experience in the Information Technology and Telecommunications industry, in 2009 Eng. Hani N. Alami assumed his current position as CEO of Coolnet, Broadband Solutions in Ramallah, Palestine.
Mr Alami’s prolific career includes time spent as Assistant Managing Director at BCI (Motorola, Polycom and Samsung Distributors in Palestine) post climbing the hierarchy from CTO to Business Development Manager BCI, one of Palestine’s largest telecom companies. As a member of the BCI founding team, Mr Alami played an active role in designing BCI network, and the company’s acquisition of many distribution channels for international telecom manufacturers worldwide.
Mr Alami is a member of the PITA: Palestinian Information Technology Association, ISOC: Internet Society of Palestine, and Palestine MTIT.
Hani Alami holds a Bachelor of Science, Microwave & RF Systems from The American University in Cairo
Article abstract
Palestine is shifting to WiFi for wireless connectivity. Conventional WiFi will not do, though, to handle vital applications and fully support the great number of users. Coverage must be ubiquitous, and bring full, high-speed, access to the information and key applications that individuals, students, businesses and essential service providers need. Access must also extend throughout this mountainous country and to reach cities, remote villages and travelers on the go. Point-to point microwave networks are meeting these needs while keeping infrastructure costs down.
Full Article
The demand of wireless connectivity became a must at homes, classrooms Campuses, Malls, Parks or even in the suburbs. The pervasive availability of wireless laptops and smart phones, coupled with the availability of e-learning, e-Gov, e-Muni and many other tools, and an expectation by users that they will have access to be online with their Social virtual World or students that they will have access to the university network from any location, at any time, have greatly fueled Wi-Fi deployments.
Not just any Wi-Fi network will suffice, because interactive multimedia-based curricula, computer-based training, wireless projectors, Smart TV’s and Smart Billboards require a Wi-Fi network with superior capacity, client density, and airtime access.
Information Technology has become a catalyst for growth in all sectors and even in some researches we see numbers for concurrent connected users per country to measure their progress in developing Broadband networks. With wireless technologies quickly becoming the primary form of edge network access, users carry expectations that the wireless networks should support voice, interactive curriculum, and broadcast quality video applications. Operators nowadays are evaluated based on what can their wireless network can support? Are they able to manage all users and their access to the network?
Current technological innovations have turned us towards a strong reliance on our beloved mobile devices. This is an advent we should accept and consider when planning our wireless network designs. In the past, network design involved a large emphasis on coverage as only a select group of people used and relied on wireless on a regular basis. Today you will be hard pressed to find a regular user who doesn’t rely on mobile network access throughout the day and commonly on multiple devices.
Indeed, in a world focusing on who gets the biggest cut of the 4G LTE spectrum and even in some cases 5th generation, Palestine is shifting technological interests to Wi-Fi. This mountainous country, spreading across cities and remote villages, offers its residents broadband internet access not only at home, but on-the-go as well.
City Wi-Fi secure networks require a different set of features than Wi-Fi Access Points for offices or campus coverage networks. We’ve designed, integrated and run wireless networks all over the country. Of course our wireless network has been designed to answer different demands and expectations depending on corporates or residential and what the clients wants to use their connection for. Regardless of all that, there are certain components for assuring the stability and the scalability of the network that have to be taken into careful consideration.
The photograph on the right depicts one of the Palestinian villages and its central Red Crescent clinic. The location, remote from any main city and surrounded by Israeli settlements could never serve as a logical investment for operators of landline copper or fiber optic networks. Instead, a wireless network running on Microwave P2P (Point-to-Point) as a main backbone feeding Wi-Fi base stations provided the solution for connecting the area to the worldwide web.
Telecommunications has been the most promising sector in the middle east over any industry or country in the past decade. Statistics indicate a transformation in data transfer capacity over the past 15 years to a more decentralized state, and this is only the beginning. While operators previously had leverage over clients when offering services, today it is the customer that chooses the services, price range and the overall payment structure to suite his/her needs.
The investment in copper-based networks was the first option; when fiber optics came into play, only developed countries could afford such a huge investment, which requires underground trenching, mapping and coordination with other utility companies (electric, water and sewage systems). The task of laying down a fully functional triple-play network for the subscriber in such cases became a hefty task left to plans for long-term projects.
Point to Point transceivers today have earned the reputation of being as reliable as fiber based networks. Substantial research in this field throughout the past five years has led to a wide variety of products to choose from depending on the desired application. The preferred technology fully depends on the target ‘market’ and this approach makes much more investment sense. The importance of infrastructure with a microwave-based P2P link is that it takes small to medium classes of equipment and connects distances over 30-50 km with no need for a high-power antenna. This arrangement allows us to transmit data at a fraction of the cost relevant to the infrastructure investment in a copper-based or fiber-based counterpart. Today’s microwave equipment has been developed to afford a capacity of up to two Gbps as aggregate throughput.
The battle between telecoms is no longer for subscribers but rather the infrastructure and access capabilities of each market player. Clients already have inexpensive access to a wide variety of coverage and data packages as well as high bandwidth in order to meet the demands of internet and data trafficking.
Palestine, which has recently emerged from instability and is climbing the infrastructure ladder exemplifies the trend of developing nations to opt for the microwave option. Palestine, has businesses running on broadband services and its residents in remote locations using Wi-Fi internet at their homes and in village streets that replaced the tradition old ADSL system.
This graph shows the correlation between investing in fiber optics as opposed to microwave networks relative to distance versus cost. While the cost of investing in microwave technology remains constant regardless of the distance, the cost of the fiber optics network increases linearly relative to distance. We may thus conclude that wireless connectivity is the feasible technology to invest in for both short and long distances.
Microwave equipment also offers benefits regarding maintenance. With integrative implementation, microwave equipment can be operated such that if an antenna failure it can be replaced by a back-up unit installed on the same transmission tower. If, on the other hand a fiber optics cable is damaged a field team will need to diagnose, replenish, and perform the splicing (similar to iron welding but performed on optic cables to connect two separate nodes). Even if treated immediately, it will require between six and 12 hours fixing the cable, depending on the severity of the case.
Reaching suburbs and rural areas is the investment that has the highest priority in network expansion projects. The target is to reach areas that competitors have never been to or have been unable to reach, connecting residents that previously were not ’feasible‘ since these are villages or small towns with low demands and budget, but now they use smart mobile devices and require the same services as capital residents so this is a new emerging market that has been dormant for so long.
Microwave technology is currently being deployed to serve 3G&4G networks, connect remote locations with main offices, and act as a backup against fiber network failures. P2P and P2MP deployments today have a market share of over 32 per cent in the private corporate sector in Palestine.
From a personal perspective, it is vital for the infrastructure chosen to be tailored, designed and implemented to suit the city or country at hand. There is no such thing as ‘wrong technology.’ Rather, it is the wrong implementation, given that the demand will always be on the rise and applications are infinite. The investment should always take into consideration the next stage. Equipment that has served long enough in the network and cannot support updated requirements are shifted to last mile locations not disposed of and only with such a design the capital expenditure of the network can be liquidated into operational expenses sooner and ensuring the highest return on investment.
Wireless networks and cloud-based systems are the current and future solution for operator and client alike. While clients are capable of affording lower subscription fees against high investments in data centers, operator are capable of tailoring uniform networks that can be both expanded gradually and provide availability for competitors to lease services f
