Harare goes wireless!

this first statement from Jeremy Cioara.
Harare has completely got itself wirelessly covered across its length and breadth. After moving around from one ISP (Internet Service Provider) office to another I was finally taken off my feet. Most new Internet providers have finally covered Harare from the sloppy parts of Highlands to satellite areas of Chitungwiza, which is a good rude awakening call to the traditional players.

Emerging players like Broadacom, Dandemutande and Seacom are proving versatile and promised world-class service but only time should be allowed to judge them.
If you move around Harare, you cannot help but notice mostly youths perching around with laptops and smartphones at Internet hotspots and cafes. Wireless technology is the new technology that has slowly taken over the traditional wired networks. Unfortunately for most Zimbabwean networks, most organisations are still hooked to the wire. What are the benefits of migrating from cabled networks to wireless, what are the pros and cons of such a move?

Wireless technology comes in different platforms and all these are very important depending on the type of service a client wants. The most popular wireless technologies around run under PAN WLAN, MAN and WAN.
Infra-red, Bluetooth, radio, Wi-Fi (wireless Fidelity), UHF,Vsat and Wimax are the running services under these platforms. Bluetooth and infra-red are common in connecting one to one small devices together for personal network, especially phone to phone, laptop, or enhancement gadgets. These are commonly called PANs, (Personal area network).

A wireless Local Area Network is typical in an office or home environment. This brings flexibility and mobility closer than ever before. Advantages of a WAN are that it permits you to roam around your laptop or portable device while still accessing the services like the Internet, network printers, servers and many more services. Wireless networks are also ideal with desktops, running network cables up your walls and ceilings is always a pain to initially run setup and maintain. Imagine hiring a guy to trace faulty cable up the ceiling that could be avoided by a once off overhaul. If your network administrator has still got you wired please ask him to free you up before “Morpheus” does.

WIFI technology has become the talk of the town and it really offers seamless connectivity to any business environment, hotspot or Internet cafe. To arrange a board of directors meetings with video conferencing on real time with applications like Skype, all you need is a boardroom and let the magic of wireless take over with absolutely no strings attached! Or is it cable.
A soccer or political journalist can give you real time updates from the pitch with video streaming if wireless technology is fully embraced.

Typical WLAN speeds for instance, 802.11a and g can support up to 54 Mb/s, while 802.11b supports up to a maximum of 11 Mb/s, making 802.11b the “slow” standard, and 802.11 a and g the preferred ones. This is much a greater speed compared to most 10mb/s LAN wired speeds on Ethernet cables. For faster local speeds, gigabit Ethernet has proved to be irreplaceable.

Wi-Fi technology though good for small networks, has its own limitations. The further you are from the access point, the weaker the signal you receive. Speed and connectivity is limited up to a maximum distance of 35m to 70m for the new 802.11n wireless adapters. Devices like repeaters can be installed to increase coverage distance. Besides distance, walls, metal sheets cordless phones and microwaves also interfere with the

Wi-Fi signal that reduces the efficiency. Although Wi-Fi has its own weaknesses it has proved to work well if it’s properly configured and has become the de facto standard for home and office use.
Free hot spots are sprouting around town and many people are squatting whenever one is discovered. Most of these free hotspots are not officially free, some offer free service due to poor security settings, but the legitimate ones I know of are Harare Publicity, Zolspots around town, Yoafrica at their central office, Chillispot at Spar supermarkets and Arundel Shopping Centre.

Meikles Hotel and Crowne Plaza are among our local hotels where you can get Wi-Fi connectivity to the Internet at a good speed. I tried war driving at our public and private hospitals but I could not get any wireless signal. All our local and international airports should offer wireless connectivity. These are ideal institutions that should not go without wireless access – the market is ready!

To be on Wi-Fi network, all you need is a laptop or smartphone with an inbuilt wireless adapter and you are up and running. If your laptop does not have a wireless adaptor it’s probably an old make, you can buy a wireless usb adapter or card that also works well on desktop computers. Most wireless add-ins are plug and play and you don’t need any expertise to install them.

Wide Area Networks have completely taken over the broadband speed of most Internet cable connectivity. This has come with lots of advantages above Wi-Fi specifications and limitations. Wireless WANs have a geographical edge and are not limited by walls or trees. They can cover as much as cities, provinces and countries.

These have given birth to technology like Wimax, CDMA, UHF, Gsm, via Vsat satellites.
All these services have been offered in Zimbabwe but unfortunately, these players have dismally failed to totally cover just the capital city. Ecoweb has a good coverage but not so ideal for medium to large business environments.

Ultra High Frequency is quiet a cheap wireless service offered over a UHF channel, however, it does not support so much speed with a maximum of 512kb/s which would then be shared by most Zimbabwean ISPs. UHF uses the same bandwidth channel with our home VCR or TV decoders. UHF is ideal for small companies depending on your bandwidth needs.

To receive UHF signal, a client might need to pay for a cable modem, the size of a DSTV decoder and an external antenna equally the size of a TV antenna but this will need the expertise of the service provider.
VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) is a satellite communications system that serves home and business users. VSAT systems uses a satellite connection as a high-speed digital link between a customer’s location and the Internet backbone. The data travels from the satellite equipment at the customer’s premise to the satellite.

A VSAT client needs a box that interfaces between the customer’s computer and an outside antenna with a transceiver. The transceiver communicates to a satellite transponder in the sky. The satellite sends and receives signals from an earth base station that acts as a hub for the system. A 56k modem is used for the transmitting link. VSAT system transmits data, voice and video signals. A trained professional can only install these devices as the customer’s premise equipment
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is now quiet a popular service in Zimbabwe, with voice phones which flooded our market around 2009.Telone supports this service and when Huawei network introduced their wireless handsets, the network service got a resounding feedback which totally congested the bottlenecked network.

CDMA is a satellite based technology which supports both voice, video and data transfer across it. I was quite fascinated to visit Broadacom that confirms to have completely covered Harare and its surrounding towns under their CDMA satellite. CDMA network has few players notably Africom, Huawei, Telone and Broadacom among others. Most of these providers have failed to offer total coverage for Harare and Chitungwiza, or they just need a rude awakening from the emerging new giants.
To access CDMA service you will need to just buy the CDMA phone which has its own in-built line and voice call rates charges that are as cheap as 6 cents within networks and 12 cents per minute across networks.

For Internet service, all you need to buy is a portable wireless CDMA router that acts as both the access point to your computers and your uplink router to the global satellite. The connectivity speeds are true 4g which ranges from a minimum of unshared 256kb/s to 1mbs, I have personally tried CDMA Internet speed and it’s really first class. Broadacom CDMA satellite has become the first to completely cover Harare CBD, industrial, residential and Chitungwiza. Bulawayo, Gweru and Mutare are also covered.

Wimax is the latest great service that could have completely covered most towns and cities but most service providers have broadcast only in the CBD and have totally ignored industrial and other potential areas. Wimax is an acronym for Wireless Interoperability for Microwave access. To achieve total coverage more Wimax base stations would need to erected. Wimax offers an amazing bandwidth of 70 mbps compared to some local broadband of 512kbs to 4mbs. Download speeds can be up to 4mbs that is just the same with cable broadband. It also stretches up to a maximum distance of 50km from the base station. It uses a line of sight technology of 30 km but this is not needed between the user and the base station unless there is real demand for bandwidth.

For a client to have Wimax service, most providers will make you buy the Wimax equipment which costs an average of US$1 000 once off payment then a monthly subscription fee which varies with the ISP, once this is set you should expect a super connectivity speed. New laptops and smartphones now support Wimax, which means if completely covered by service providers, it is possible to travel online from Harare to

Bulawayo without any need for a hotspot. To check whether you have Wimax service in your area, please confirm with your desired service provider.
Metropolitan Area Networks ( MAN) are designed to cover large areas but are privately controlled and owned to extend point to point networks. Our police force, hospitals, the fire brigade and local councils could take advantage and create their own MAN hot spots where users can easily access their network for reactionary service or Internet phones. With technology like Voice Over Internet Protocol, this is a very cheap service to call anyone within or outside your network for as low as 5 cents per minute. Critical sectors should afford to offer emergency call service for free and make wireless fixed phones available to the public in case of emergency.

Harare City Council has done good by running the free publicity hotspot centre at Africa Unity Square. Imagine logging on to a hotspot of a group of medical practitioners for a specialist, where you actually log in and book an appointment with your own doctor from anywhere in town, maybe a public Internet based phone to call any ambulance or taxi for free. We need to enhance service delivery as a nation for Zimbabwe to completely go global.

Although wireless technology brings flexibility and seamless connectivity, it can prove to be the most disastrous move if configured by an amateur. Wireless technology needs more security than cable network does because the signal can be easily accessed by anyone who is closer to the broadcasting devices.

Enhanced security like WAP and AES has to be implemented. Most Wi-Fi routers in Harare run WEP security which can be easily cracked in less than 30minutes before an intruder abuses or takes over your network. Applications like Wireshark can capture the data packets over WEP security to crack passwords. It is also advised not to use a catchy name on wireless SSID, as this would cause unnecessary attention from crackers.
Wireless technology combined with these promising fibre cable players like Seacom via Beira are bound to take Zimbabwe to world class connectivity speeds. Let’s wait and see if they stick to their promise.